“Immunomedical Reform and Protection”

January 29, 2001

Bill Gates Gives $100 Million for AIDS Vaccine

[By Ben Hirschler, European pharmaceuticals correspondent for

Reuters.]

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010129/hl/gates_1.html

Microsoft Corp boss Bill Gates on Saturday pledged $100 million to help develop an African AIDS vaccine that could be ready within five years, if all goes well.

Trials of the new vaccine will begin in Kenya in the next few days, Seth Berkley, head of the non-profitmaking International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), told reporters at the World Economic Forum (news – web sites) meeting in Davos .

The vaccine, which has been tested since August on volunteers in Oxford, England, was developed after doctors found that a group of prostitutes in Nairobi never contracted HIV (news - web sites), despite repeated exposure to infection.

It is one of around 25 vaccines being tested on humans around the world but is the first to target the “A” strain of HIV prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation—the software billionaire’s charity—said the new $100 million being provided to Berkley’s group was a “challenge grant,” designed to encourage other backers. Internet company Yahoo Inc is providing a further $5 million.

In all, the IAVI is seeking $550 million to fund its development work through 2007.

“It is clear that a widely accessible preventive vaccine is the best hope for ending this pandemic...IAVI’s model of speed and flexibility has allowed the Oxford/Nairobi vaccine candidate to move forward in near record time,” said Berkley.

Recent scientific advances made it likely a vaccine of at least limited efficacy would be ready within a decade—and it could take as little as four to five years in a best case scenario, he added.

Berkley’s group—which is committed to ensuring any AIDS vaccine is made available to developing countries at a reasonable price—has now received commitments totaling $230 million, including two previous gifts

from the Gates foundation totaling $26.5 million.

Berkley said a vaccine was the only way to fight AIDS in Africa, where antiretroviral drugs costing some $15,000 a year were out of reach.

But he noted there was little incentive for commercial companies to develop products for the developing world and, as a result, vaccine research received less than two percent of the $20 billion spent each year on AIDS prevention, research and treatment.

More than 25 million people in Africa are now infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, according to the United Nations

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