Important note: Information in this article was accurate in March 2002. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date. IAVI Report - March / April 2002
Emily Bass
On May 6, 2002, IAVI announced a new vaccine development partnership (VDP) with the Swedish biotechnology firm, Bioption AB, to develop HIV vaccines based on a new delivery system made at Stockholm's Karolinska Institute. The vaccines will use Semliki Forest Virus (SFV) replicons, which are genetically modified versions of SFV, a member of the alphavirus family. Alphaviruses have a broad host range and generally do not cause disease in humans, and the SFV vector has been engineered to attentuate the virus further.
One potential advantage of SFV and other alphaviruses is a self-amplifying replication pattern in which certain segments of the viral genome are copied several times during a single replication cycle. This property could be useful in developing "dose-sparing" vaccination strategies, since more antigen could potentially be made by a given amount of vaccine. Additionally, SFV replicons cause programmed cell death after replication is completed, eliminating the risk of DNA integration into the cellular genome.
The IAVI-Bioption partnership aims to have an SFV-based candidate (based on HIV subtype C) in human trials within two years. It will also be tested head-to-head against other AIDS vaccines, including those using naked DNA or bacterial vectors, as a way of comparing different vaccine vectors.
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©2002. The IAVI Report.
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