Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2004. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Wall Street Journal - January 16, 2004
David P. Hamilton And Marilyn Chase, Staff Reporters of The Wall Street Journal
The critique, published Friday in the journal Science, takes aim at the $119 million test involving 16,000 Thai volunteers. The research group contends the trial isn't likely to work, will probably waste scarce research funds and may make testing of future vaccines more difficult.
The move reflects a split among scientists over the future of AIDS vaccine testing. On one side are AIDS researchers who say laboratory studies offer little hope that existing vaccine candidates can prevent HIV infection. As a result, they say, limited research funds would be better spent on additional basic research that might shed light on ways to develop better vaccines.
The skeptics say their case is bolstered by the recent failure of Aidsvax, a much-hyped AIDS vaccine from VaxGen Inc., Brisbane, Calif., to protect thousands of U.S. and Thai volunteers from HIV infection. The current trial involves a combination of Aidsvax and a vaccine called Alvac from Aventis Pasteur, a unit of France's Aventis SA.
"I think scientists need to start facing up to how dismal the prospects are" for finding a working AIDS vaccine, said Ronald Desrosiers, a Harvard University researcher and an author of the Science critique. In addition, these researchers fear that failure of the Alvac/Aidsvax vaccine will weaken governmental and volunteer support for vaccine trials.
On the other side, researchers contend that vaccine testing inevitably involves trial and error, given limited knowledge of the human immune system. These researchers say the Alvac/Aidsvax combination appears to produce different immune responses than either component raises on its own.
VaxGen offered similar arguments for the earlier tests of its vaccine, which also drew criticism from some of the same researchers who signed the Science article. VaxGen paid for those tests after the U.S. National Institutes of Health declined to offer support. By contrast, the Alvac/Aidsvax trial is funded by the NIH and the U.S. Army.
Write to David P. Hamilton at david.hamilton@wsj.com and Marilyn Chase at marilyn.chase@wsj.com
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