Vaccine Designed to Shield AIDS Carriers

A two-stage vaccine against HIV that is designed to benefit individuals already carrying the virus has demonstrated nearly complete protection against developing clinical AIDS in early stage trials with non-human primates.

The vaccine, which was developed by Geovax Incorporated (Atlanta, GA, USA), comprises a combination of DNA and modified vaccinia Ankara (MVA) to stimulate production of anti-HIV antibodies and anti-HIV T cells. MVA virus, which has been engineered to express foreign genes, is widely considered as the vaccinia virus strain of choice for clinical investigation because of its high safety profile.

In preclinical trials the DNA/MVA vaccine was 96% effective in protecting non-human primates against developing clinical AIDS. Twenty-two out of 23 non-human primates that received the vaccine were protected against developing clinical signs of AIDS. The animal that was not protected received only a partial dose of vaccine. Over 83% of the unvaccinated controls (5/6) died of clinical AIDS within eight months after receiving live HIV, and all the animals had levels of virus in the blood stream 10 to 100-fold higher than in typical HIV-1 infected humans.



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