The World Needs a Vaccine
In 2004, an estimated 40 million people worldwide were living with HIV infection, and an estimated 14,000 become infected with HIV each day. More than 90% of these new infections occur in the developing world, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Despite intensive efforts to improve access to antiretroviral treatment, most of the people in these areas have limited access to effective treatment or prevention measures. A safe and effective HIV preventive vaccine is urgently needed and is the best long-term hope to bring the HIV/AIDS epidemic under control.
Working Together to Find a Vaccine
In May 1997, President Clinton set a national goal of developing a vaccine to prevent AIDS within 10 years. In March 1998, the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA) recommended to the President that to achieve the goal of developing an HIV vaccine, all federal agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), should lend their experience and expertise to HIV vaccine development and evaluation. In response to the President’s goal and PACHA's call for action, CDC established an HIV Vaccine Unit within the Epidemiology Branch of the Divisions of HIV/AIDS Prevention. In 2003, CDC joined with the National Institutes for Health (NIH), the Department of Defense, and the NIH-funded HIV Vaccine Trials Network as the Partnership for AIDS Vaccine Evaluation (PAVE), a collaboration of the US government–sponsored entities working on HIV vaccine development and evaluation.
Recent and Current Activities
CDC played an important role in the trials (VAX003 and VAX004) that evaluated the efficacy of gp120-based vaccine candidates. The vaccine was produced by a private company, VaxGen, which also sponsored the trials. CDC sponsored a series of behavioral and biomedical studies linked to the VAX004 efficacy trial in North America and was part of the consortium that conducted the VAX003 trial in Thailand. Although the vaccine candidates failed to prevent HIV infection, the successful conduct of these trials proved that large HIV vaccine efficacy trials were possible, even in developing countries.
As part of PAVE, CDC is collaborating with other US government–sponsored organizations in a wide range of HIV vaccine activities. Current activities include developing new animal models for the evaluation of vaccine candidates and developing epidemiologic and laboratory capacity for future trials of HIV vaccine candidates at sites in Africa and in Thailand.
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