An experimental AIDS vaccine made from two failed products has protected people for the first time, reducing the rate of infection by about 30 percent, researchers said on Thursday.
Developers said they were now debating how to test the limited amounts of vaccine they have left to find out if there are ways to make it work better.
Scientists said they were unsure how or why the vaccines worked when used together in the trial, which took place in Thailand, and will study the volunteers to find out.
All agreed that a commercial product would be years away, but the WHO said the result created new hope that an effective vaccine would eventually be found.
“The result of the study is a very important step for developing an AIDS vaccine,” Thai Health Minister Withaya Kaewparadai told a news conference in Bangkok. “It’s the first time in the world that we have found a vaccine that can prevent HIV infection.”
Activists and researchers alike were thrilled.
“The outcome is very exciting news and a significant scientific achievement,” said Seth Berkley, chief executive officer of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, which was not involved in this study. “It’s the first demonstration that a candidate AIDS vaccine provides benefit in humans.”
The vaccine is a combination of Sanofi-Pasteur’s ALVAC canary pox/HIV vaccine and the failed HIV vaccine AIDSVAX, made by a San Francisco firm called VaxGen and now owned by the nonprofit Global Solutions for Infectious Diseases.
The trial was sponsored by the US government and conducted by the Thai Ministry of Public Health. It cut the risk of infection by 31.2 percent among 16,402 volunteers over three years.
“We had 74 infections in the placebo group and 51 in the vaccine group,” said Jerome Kim, a US colonel at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Maryland, who helped lead the trial.
The results were a triumph for supporters, who went ahead with the giant trial despite criticism it was unethical or a waste of money because the vaccine was widely expected to have no effect.
The AIDS virus infects an estimated 33 million people globally and has killed 25 million since it was identified in the 1980s. It affects immune cells called T-cells.
Cocktails of drugs can control HIV but there is no cure. In 2007, Merck ended a trial of its vaccine after it was found not to work, and in 2003, AIDSVAX used alone was found to offer no protection.
The WHO and the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS stressed the effects of the vaccine in the Thailand test were modest.
“However, these results have instilled new hope in the HIV vaccine research field and promise that a safe and highly effective HIV vaccine may become available for populations throughout the world who are most in need of such a vaccine,” they said.
“What is needed here is more in-depth analysis,” Sanofi’s Jim Tartaglia told a briefing.
Donald Francis of Global Solutions for Infectious Diseases said the companies had limited amounts of vaccine left to test and would have to make more.
“For me the biggest question is, how do you take what we know of this vaccine and give it greater protective power. Once you know that, then it makes sense to go to other parts of a population,” Sanofi’s Chris Viehbacher said.
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