Biggest study to ‘nail’ virus gets under way

CHICAGO: The next five years will be a crunch time for HIV researchers in South Africa, with a leading local scientist vowing researchers will use this period to “nail” the evasive virus as they are intensifying their efforts to find an effective vaccine.

South Africa is currently part of three major HIV vaccine trials, with one of the much-awaited trials, the HVTN 702 having been launched. South Africa is also on the map for the so-called AMP (Anti-body mediated prevention study), which will see participants being infused with broadly neutralising antibodies (bNAb) – potent antibodies which are resistant to HIV and are able to kill the virus.

The HVTN 702 study, which is a follow-up to RV144 that was carried out in Thailand in 2009 and showed an efficacy of about 31percent protection against HIV, is expected to be completedin three years, with its early results expected in 20 months.

Speaking at the HIV Research for Prevention conference in Chicago last week, Professor Glenda Gray, who is the president of the SA Medical Research Council and research professor of paediatrics at Wits University, revealed the first few participants of 5 400 people to take part in this mega study across 15 sites in the country, received their first inoculations last week. The study is the biggest in seven years. Participants will receive five injections during the three-year study period. It is hoped the vaccine will finally teach the immune system how to protect itself against the vicious virus which has evaded scientists for the past 30 years.

Gray described the next five years as “a period of discovery” that will teach scientists new information that they never knew about the virus.

“We will discover information about HIV that we never knew before. We are optimistic that we will nail this pathogen which has evaded us for so long.”

She admitted that up to now the HIV virus has “always outwitted us”, but with the latest evidence scientists are hoping to “outsmart HIV and successfully develop a vaccine”.

If the HTVN 702 trial proves to be at least 50 percent successful in preventing infection, the vaccine will be licensed. – Sipokazi Fokazi CHICAGO: A decade of flat funding for HIV programmes could imperil promising preventative initiatives such as the development of HIV/Aids vaccines, microbicides and use of antiretroviral drugs as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP).

This is according to the annual report by the Resource Tracking for HIV Prevention Working Group (RTWG), which has tracked HIV Research and development investment between 2000 and last year.

Funding for research and development decreased slightly last year from $1.25 billion to $1.20bn this year. This was due to the US public sector and a downsizing in global philanthropic funding.

The report, released at the second bi-annual HIV meeting – the HIV Research for Prevention (HIVR4P) conference in Chicago – also found while funding was made across all phases of research, it remained concentrated among a few major investors, mainly the US government, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The authors of the report called for a more balanced funding base, arguing more diverse funding would increase the stability of research and development and cushion the impact developing countries could feel should the major funders reduce investment.

Mark Feinberg, one of the report’s authors, said with the strong momentum over the last few years such as the use of PrEP, microbicide vaginal ring and the development of an Aids vaccine, there was a need for more funding to “expedite the development of vaccine strategies and other new biomedical prevention options that promise to be safe, accessible and effective throughout the world”.

“There must be adequate and sustained investment at all stages from early laboratory research and to clinical testing if we are to truly be able to contain the HIV pandemic” he said.

Mitchell Warren, executive director from Avac, which co-authored the report, said investments into HIV research were required to ensure “new options like the daily PrEP and potentially the dapivirine vaginal ring do not sit on the shelf unused”. – Sipokazi Fokazi