Research into HIV vaccines needs to change direction

doi:10.1136/bmj.39535.478322.DB

BMJ 2008;336:743 (5 April), doi:10.1136/bmj.39535.478322.DB

News

Research into HIV vaccines needs to change direction

Bob Roehr

¹ Washington, DC

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

HIV vaccine research should turn away from clinical trials andrefocus instead on more basic studies, a meeting in Bethesda,Maryland, decided last week.

"Despite hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars, the realityin 2008 is that an HIV vaccine clearly remains beyond our grasp,"said Warner Greene, director of the Gladstone Institute of Virologyand Immunology at the University of California, San Francisco,at the opening session.

Last autumn a second candidate for an HIV vaccine failed. Althoughfew expected it to protect against infection, the hope had beenthat it might bolster immune defences and result in slower progressionof disease in people who became infected.

The shock was that those who received the vaccine appeared tobe slightly more likely to become infected with HIV than peoplewho received a placebo. The trial was stopped, and researchersare still analysing the data to try to understand . . . [Full text of this article]

Add to CiteULike CiteULike Add to Complore Complore Add to Connotea Connotea Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us Add to Digg Digg Add to Reddit Reddit Add to Technorati Technorati What's this?