BANGALORE: AIDS vaccine trials to begin in 2004

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AIDS vaccine trials to begin in 2004

TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ THURSDAY, AUGUST 14, 2003 12:52:08 AM ]

BANGALORE: Trials of the first AIDS vaccine to be tested in India —

the Modified Vaccinia Ankara (MVA) — will begin in the first quarter

of 2004.

The preventive AIDS vaccine programme that counters the HIV subtype

C, most prevalent in the country, is being developed at Pune's

National AIDS Research Institute. Preparations are also on for phase

II and III trials, says Anjali Nayyar, country director of the

International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI). At the first state-

level interactive session for Karnataka on Wednesday, she said

similar meetings have been held in Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and

Tamil Nadu — other states with high prevalence of HIV/AIDS.

Vijay L. Mehra, programme director, applied vaccine research,

detailed the AIDS vaccine research programme in India. Phase I and II

trials are " safety trials " where the safety of the vaccine on humans

will be tested. " In Phase I, MVA will be tested on 20-40 volunteers

who do not have the virus. Phase II will also be on an unaffected

group, but a much larger one of around 200 to 300 volunteers. Phase

III are the efficacy trials conducted on a few thousand people in the

high-risk group. "

Animal trials of the vaccine are on at present; but animal-testing

for HIV vaccines has a hitch: the virus is not prevalent among

animals. The current vaccine is different; it is a multigenic one

made of gene and protein parts rather than the viral vaccines,

developed from a weakened version of a whole virus, Mehra said.

Therion Biologics Inc of the US is manufacturing the multigenic

recombinant MVA-based AIDS vaccine for the trials. " If the vaccine is

found to be promising in the Phase I, there will be a transfer of

technology from the US firm to an Indian manufacturer to produce the

vaccine for Phase II and III trials, " he said.

The vaccine is being developed specifically for the Indian subtype of

the HIV virus and has to be tested on Indians, " Mehra says.

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