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HIV/AIDS vaccine still some years away
www.chinanews.cn 2005-12-05 09:23:58
(Source: China Daily)
Dec. 5 - An HIV vaccine may still be a dream but scientists say that in
four to five years they may be able to tell the world which candidate
vaccines could successfully be developed into effective ones.
Currently nobody can tell exactly when an effective vaccine will be
available for the deadly virus though dozens have been trialled and
proved to be ineffective over the past years, an international symposium
revealed over the weekend in Beijing.
Robert Gallo, a scientist from University of Maryland Baltimore who
participated in the symposium, was the man that proved that the virus now
known as HIV causes AIDS. He commented on the difficulties facing the
successful development of an HIV preventative vaccine which include the
following issues:
Testing cannot use an attenuated live version of the virus or an entire
dead version of the virus, forcing the use of subunits of the virus in
testing.
There are enormous variations of the virus. Though vaccines can establish
antibodies in a person the virus is able to mutate to modify itself,
causing the antibody to become ineffective.
HIV is a retrovirus. Therefore it integrates its genes into the cell's
genes upon infection complicating vaccine development further.
He called all institutes of human virology throughout the world to take
on the responsibility of developing possible vaccines against HIV.
Although nobody can tell exactly which vaccines will be effective, some
vaccines exist that are worthy of further research and development, and
these need to be identified, he said.
Some of these potentially effective vaccines are being tested and
developed in China.
Currently, one vaccine has reached the human test stage for the first
time in China, in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.
Another vaccine, being developed by Shao Yiming, chief expert of the
National Centre for AIDS/STD, and his followers, has passed the animal
test stage and is applying for the human test stage now.
Chinese HIV vaccine research has learned many lessons from the experience
of other Chinese experts who have successfully developed vaccines for
smallpox and other endemic diseases, Shao said.
More than 150 domestic and overseas scientists gathered at the symposium,
which begun on Saturday and lasts until tomorrow, to discuss every
possible preventive measure against the virus which now infects nearly 40
million people worldwide.
Besides the development of a vaccine, other preventive measures have been
proposed by experts at the symposium such as public education, the
issuance of clean needles, and methadone administration to encourage drug
users to receive drugs from a safer and cleaner source.
By the end of this year, it is hoped that 128 stations will have been
established in the country, with the role of administering free methadone
to drug users in a clean and controlled environment to reduce the chance
of HIV infection among drug users, Hao Yang, vice-director of the Disease
Control Department of the Ministry of Health, told China Daily.
Meanwhile, China should encourage people to take HIV tests, in particular
among blood donors, to prevent the spreading of the disease through blood
transfusions, said Robert Gallo.
In China, at least 23 per cent of the total reported HIV/AIDS sufferers
are infected through receiving contaminated blood in hospitals.
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