EuroVacc to test combination AIDS vaccine in June

Last Updated: 2003-04-30 10:01:15 -0400 (Reuters Health)

By Fiona Fleck

GENEVA (Reuters Health) - Clinical trials of a new vaccine against HIV infection are due to start in Switzerland and the UK in June, researchers involved in the study said on Tuesday.

Dr. Jean-Pierre Kraehenbuhl, vice-president of EuroVacc Foundation, which is organising the trials, said they will test two vaccines -- DNA-C, developed by Professor Hans Wolf of the University of Regensburg, Germany, and its booster, NYVAC, developed by French pharmaceutical company Aventis.

DNA-C contains DNA that codes for particular proteins that are part of the viral cell, according to Kraehenbuhl, a researcher at the Institute of Biochemistry at Lausanne University.

"We are going to inject genetic information from the AIDS virus to trigger antibodies in the host's cells," he told Reuters Health.

Kraehenbuhl said about 160 healthy volunteers -- half in London and half in the Swiss city of Lausanne, where EuroVacc is based -- will test the vaccine for safety in June and early next year.

Half of the group at London's St. Mary's Hospital, Imperial College and half of the group at Lausanne University Hospital's clinical immunology department will test DNA-C, and the others will test the NYVAC vaccine, he said.

In a second trial slated for 2004, healthy volunteers will receive DNA-C as a primer followed by a NYVAC booster, again to test for safety. Pre-clinical trials have shown that NYVAC can prevent viral infection in macaques.

In 2005, the DNA-NYVAC combination will be tested in new trials in Switzerland, the Netherlands, the UK, Spain, Italy, Germany and Sweden, using hundreds of volunteers who are at high risk of HIV infection -- including homosexuals, drug users and sex workers.

Volunteers' rate of infection will be monitored and compared with others from similar groups who have not been given the vaccine.

If the vaccine is effective, EuroVacc will then vaccinate large sections of the population in Tanzania, Rwanda, South Africa, China and Russia.

More than 30 research teams in eight European countries have been involved in the EuroVac programme, which started in 2000 and was precursor to the EuroVacc Foundation, founded in 2002. The organisation had to add a second "c" to the end of its name to avoid confusion with the EuroVac vacuum cleaner company.

Scientists think an effective vaccine against HIV, which has infected more than 40 million people worldwide, is the only hope for controlling the disease. But VaxGen's AIDSVAX, the only candidate vaccine so far to reach the last stage of clinical testing, has failed to protect most of those in whom it was tested.

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