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New pledge to control spread of HIV/AIDS
(China Daily/Reuters)
Updated: 2005-12-01 05:59
Scientists believe a vaccine is the best hope for ending the global AIDS
pandemic that has killed about 3.1 million people this year. But defeating the
virus has proved more difficult than researchers had expected.
Gallo, in Israel to accept an award from Bar-Ilan University in advance of
World AIDS day on Thursday, said it was still too early to say when a vaccine
could be produced for humans.
Researchers believe an effective AIDS vaccine is still many years away.
"We have had some interesting results in the monkeys that show we can make an
immune response,," Gallo said, noting potential progress on overcoming the
problem of mutation of the virus.
But the antibodies produced in his experiments lasted only up to four months,
which is far less than needed for an effective vaccine.
"We are making progress with a preventive vaccine, but we are not there yet,"
added Gallo, who discovered the AIDS virus with France's Luc Montagnier.
Earlier this week Europe's biggest drug maker GlaxoSmithKline Plc announced a
plan to develop an experimental AIDS vaccine along with France's Institut
Pasteur.
They intend to make the vaccine by fusing genes from HIV on to an existing
vaccine for measles.
More than 30 AIDS vaccine trials in humans are ongoing but no one can predict
if any will be effective against the virus that has infected nearly 5 million
people in 2005.
Antiretroviral drugs have prolonged lives of people with HIV/AIDS but public
health experts say preventing the spread of virus, by using condoms, abstinence
and needle exchange programs, is also essential for halting the epidemic.
The number of people living with HIV/AIDS hit a record high of 40.3 million
this year, according to the latest figures from the Joint United Nations Program
on HIV/AIDS ( UNAIDS) and the World Health Organization.
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