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Page: << Prev | 1 | 2 | 3 So, those are the main components of any viable vaccine: a broad immunity against a variety of strains; a two-pronged immune attack that involves antibodies and T-cells; and a "hit-hard, hit-early" approach that stops HIV from setting up it's stronghold in the gut.
And, as Gallo, stressed, "any immune response must last, because we can't vaccinate every couple of months."
The task ahead seems daunting, but progress is being made, the experts said.
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According to Gallo, his lab at the University of Maryland's Institute of Human Virology has one promising candidate. In primate trials, the vaccine has fulfilled most of the criteria -- except that immunity seems to fade with time.
"If we can solve the problem of keeping immunity going long-term, I'd say it's a candidate-rational vaccine," Gallo said.
Over at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, a group led by pathologist David Watkins has successfully tested a vaccine that has provided monkeys with protection from up to 20 different strains of the simian equivalent of HIV, using only T-cell mediated immunity.
Similar experiments have panned out well in pathologist Louis J. Picker's lab at the Oregon Health & Science University, Koff noted.
At the same time, money continues to pour into HIV vaccine research, either from private industry or from nonprofit sources such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, IAVI, and the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
The failures of the past have also toughened the science, the experts said.
"Over the past year or two, there have been a lot of calls for a return to basic science, rather than [quickly] testing candidates in people," Johnston said. "It all comes back to a question of doing our homework in basic research, so that we can really come up with a strong candidate that we can have a lot more optimism for."
Gallo agreed.
"There were a number of people in the past who were thinking naively that anything was going to work," he said. HIV has proven much tougher than that, of course. "However, I still believe that a vaccine is do-able, or I wouldn't be working on it," he said.
More information
Find out more about the search for an AIDS vaccine at IAVI.
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