New HIV vaccine on the horizon

By Michelle L. Young
Daily Forty-Niner

A new potential vaccine designed to prevent HIV infection was discussed at an HIV seminar held Friday in LA5.

The vaccine, called AIDSVAX, has been administered to non-infected chimpanzees and has proven to be 100 percent successful in preventing HIV, said Jack Barritt, project manager of Specialty Central Laboratories, a research-based clinical reference laboratory.

AIDSVAX, designed for non-infected people, builds antibodies the body needs to prevent HIV, Barritt said. The drug's only side effects are soreness in the arm and few people noted headaches.

Wendy Stapleton, a senior in biology, found the seminar to be informative.

"The discussion was very informative and hopeful," Stapleton said. "It is amazing that 100 percent of the chimpanzees that received the vaccine didn't get HIV and the other group of chimpanzees that received the saline solution did get HIV."

In its fourth and final year, a study of the vaccine involves 8,000 high-risk gay men who have a partner that is HIV-positive. HIV is more common in men as the disease is found in blood and sperm, whereas HIV is only found in the blood in women, Barritt said.

The study involves subjects who span three countries, including the United States.

Of the 8,000 subjects, one-third are given a saline solution, while two-thirds are administered the vaccine. To test the drug's effectiveness, the study has blinded results so subjects are not sure what they are injected with, Barritt said.

HIV is a latent disease, which means that a patient could already be infected with HIV, but doctors or researchers may not detect the disease for a while. Once the disease reveals itself, researchers are able to detect when the disease was contracted, Barritt said.

Detecting when HIV had been contracted enables researchers to determine if a subject of the study had HIV before the vaccine was administered. This enforces the actual effectiveness of AIDSVAX, he said.

A study has yet to be conducted concerning the length of time the drug is effective once it is injected in the body, Barritt said.

"The drug has a six-year shelf-life," he said. "It is important to realize that AIDSVAX is not a cure."

The vaccine also slows down the process of HIV, Barritt said.

"The drug AIDSVAX does bring fear of possibly causing HIV to mutate, although the current HIV strain has not mutated in about eight years," Barritt said.

If the HIV strain does mutate, the vaccine may become ineffective and a new drug will be needed, he added.

In one year, the results of the AIDSVAX study will be presented to the Food and Drug Administration for licensing of the drug, Barritt said.

With over 36 million HIV infected people throughout the world, Barritt said AIDSVAX is expected to turn into a $50 to 70 billion dollar market to its maker, VaxGen.

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