The hunt for an effective HIV vaccine has been stepped up with the launch of a major European-backed research programme, it was announced yesterday.
The European AIDS Vaccine Initiative – EAVI2020 – will see 22 leading HIV researchers from public organisations and biotech companies from across Europe, Australia, Canada and the USA work together to try to develop HIV vaccines.
Recent advances to find an effective treatment include isolating antibodies so that they can block HIV infection in preclinical models, and using synthetic biology to design better vaccines.
Now, this consortium, which is led by Imperial College London and funded by the European Commission, aims to develop novel candidate vaccines that can be taken through to human trials within five years.
Some 23 million Euros is being invested in the project.
Professor Robin Shattock, co-ordinator of EAVI2020, from the Department of Medicine at Imperial College London, said: "Creating an effective vaccine against HIV represents one of the greatest biological challenges of a generation.
“This project creates a unique opportunity for us to build on the enormous scientific progress gleaned over the last few years, providing an unprecedented insight into the nature of protective antibodies and anti-viral cellular response that will be needed for an effective vaccine. This new project should enable us to move much more quickly.”
Dr Ruxandra Draghia-Akli, director of the health directorate at the Directorate General for Research and Innovation of the European Commission said The European Commission had supported HIV vaccine research for more than 30 years and would continue to play an essential part in it.
He said it had “high hopes for success” with this latest initiative.
“This will allow European scientists to work together and in collaboration with researchers from outside Europe to successfully develop predictive tools and better vaccine candidates to be tested at an early stage of the process.”
Leave a Reply