New AIDS vaccine effort urged

BANGKOK—Only a vaccine can end the AIDS epidemic, but the effort to develop one so far has been disgraceful, Seth Berkley, president of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), said here at the International AIDS Conference.

"We've had one candidate fully tested in humans," he told reporters at the meeting. "That is a global disgrace."

Berkley said the world needs to make vaccines part of the comprehensive agenda against AIDS. "We need an enhanced science effort, using an industrial model," he told The Scientist. Candidates need to be developed in parallel and not sequentially, and "we must solve the remaining scientific challenges that are holding us back."

The number of vaccine candidates in the pipeline is now about 30. The trouble is, all the candidates seem to be working on a single approach, T-cell immunity, said Wayne Koff, IAVI's senior vice president for research.

Crucially, scientists have known for over ...