Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2005. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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Wall Street Journal - October 11, 2005
Marilyn Chase, Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
To date, most experimental vaccines used strains from one or two regions, often concentrating on virus strains from the West.
Gary Nabel, director of the Vaccine Research Center of NIH, based in Bethesda, Md., said it is the first study of a "broadly relevant" vaccine that attempts to arrest the global pandemic that now infects 40 million people world-wide.
Researchers said they hope to recruit 480 healthy, uninfected volunteers at 13 sites in the U.S., South America, the Caribbean and Africa. The test will administer four injections of either the vaccine, or a saltwater placebo, and it is being coordinated with two other studies by the U.S. military and overseas researchers.
The vaccine is constructed of synthetic non-infectious versions of four genes from three major strains of the virus. Researchers will inject them as simple DNA fragments of the virus, or the same genes packaged inside a harmless cold virus. *Vical* Inc. of San Diego, Ca., and *GenVec* Inc. of Gaithersburg, Md., supplied ingredients of the vaccine.
Mitchell Warren, executive director of the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, a New York-based nonprofit that promotes the quest to create a preventive tool against the scourge, called the move "exciting news from our perspective."
Write to Marilyn Chase at marilyn.chase@wsj.com
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