Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2008. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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Wall Street Journal Blog - August 6, 2008
Posted by Marilyn Chase
Berkley told the Health Blog it's time to abandon the majority of vaccines now under development, which copy the failed Merck strategy of tweaking cell-based immunity.
His views are explored in detail in IAVI's AIDS Vaccine Blueprint 2008, released at the 17th Annual International AIDS Conference in Mexico City. Berkley and like-minded colleagues want to focus on vaccines that mobilize antibodies rather than immune-system cells to neutralize HIV in the bloodstream to prevent infection.
A research consortium affiliated with IAVI has identified four antibodies that might be up to the task, and Berkley thinks there could be as many as 15. Berkley also wants the field to reconsider using harmless live viruses as missiles to carry an AIDS-vaccine warhead that would replicate continuously to keep immune stimulation going - even though this approach heightens safety and regulatory concerns.
Far from retrenching in investment in AIDS vaccines Berkley says the field - which now commands nearly $1 billion annually from all public and private donors - should be bolstered to tap new technologies like artificial immune systems, robotics and high throughput analysis to speed fresh vaccine designs. Pruning unproductive research projects, Berkley argues, will free funds and energy for better vaccine designs, even if the switch bruises some egos.
Finally his blueprint for vaccines waves off the current funk by pointing out that the quarter-century AIDS vaccine effort - however discouraging - is young compared to the time other prevention efforts took from discovery of a disease germ to creation of a licensed vaccine. Consider: whooping cough, 42 years; polio, 47 years; chickenpox, 42 years; typhoid fever, 105 years.
Oh, there is one other thing he recommends. Berkley wants vaccine scientists to stop wasting time on so many meetings. There are dozens of vaccine meetings a year, when one or two would do, he says. A meetings diet would lighten the travel load and help keep scientists in their labs.
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