AEGiS-WSJ: AIDS Vaccine 'Not Around Corner'

Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2005. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

AIDS Vaccine 'Not Around Corner'

Wall Street Journal - March 3, 2005
Gautam Naik at gautam.naik@wsj.com

Bill Gates's health foundation's overriding goal is to fund the development of an AIDS vaccine, but the Microsoft Corp. founder says it will take more than a decade to get there -- a longer period than others had previously predicted.

"An AIDS vaccine is not around the corner," Mr. Gates told journalists in London on his trip to Britain to receive an honorary knighthood. "I'll eat my hat" if one is developed within the next 10 years, he said.

Mr. Gates's prediction runs somewhat counter to more optimistic forecasts made by other prominent figures. Last month, Gordon Brown, Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer, said increased research funding could yield a partly effective AIDS vaccine as early as 2012. In 1997, then-U.S. President Bill Clinton evoked the memory of John F. Kennedy's call to put a man on the moon and similarly challenged scientists to devise an AIDS vaccine by 2007.

The search for a preventable drug for HIV , the virus that causes AIDS, is turning out to be one of the most difficult endeavors in modern medicine. Most vaccines tested so far have flopped, despite nearly two decades of research. Last year, there were about five million new HIV infections world-wide. Still, a range of new medicines has proved extremely effective in keeping HIV in check once a person is infected.

HIV has different strains and constantly mutates, complicating efforts to create a vaccine. Because it attacks the immune system, it doesn't spark a typical immune response in a person.

"In the natural course of HIV infection, the virus wins 99% of the time, showing that specific immunity in an infected person is unable to completely clear the virus," concluded David Ho, the noted AIDS researcher at New York's Rockefeller University, in an article published in the January edition of Public Library of Science Medicine, a research journal.

Nonetheless, the pace of vaccine research has accelerated. More than 30 experimental AIDS vaccines are being tested in small-scale trials, according to the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative. Most AIDS vaccine trials have gotten started in the past four years. In 2000, Uganda was the only African country participating in a vaccine trial, though at least four are involved now.

The quest for a workable AIDS vaccine is the main mission for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has a $29 billion endowment and mainly funds global health projects, including tuberculosis and malaria. Last month, the foundation promised as much as $360 million over five years to support initiatives to speed up the search for an AIDS vaccine. In addition, the foundation has pledged about $126 million for AIDS vaccine research.

Meanwhile, to Mr. Gates, the best hope for reducing HIV infections during the next decade appears to be a microbicide, a topical gel or cream to prevent the virus from being transmitted via sexual contact. The effort to develop such a product is being overseen by the Alliance for Microbicide Development, a nonprofit group of drug companies, research institutes and health organizations.

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