$25 Million Gates Grant To Jump Start HIV Vaccine Research

Early this month, the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) announced that it had received the largest single grant ever made for AIDS research. The William A. Gates Foundation, which gave IAVI $1.5 million last June, granted IAVI $25 million over a five-year period, which the organization will use in part for work on two to three new HIV-vaccine candidates.

IAVI, a New York City-based international scientific organization created to aid in bringing HIV vaccines and technology to developing nations and making such vaccines affordable, now can fund research on more vaccine candidates. Seth Berkley, IAVI's president, says that the funds can be put toward more studies on the vectors researchers currently have, working on the process engineering for vaccines under development, working on new vectors, and determining what genes should be in a potential vaccine.

Berkley hopes that IAVI can begin human clinical trials in Kenya with an MVA...