Researchers from Royal Holloway recently created a prototype HIV vaccine vector that has further advanced treatments for HIV by implementing an approach like the one used to develop Ebola and malaria vaccines.
Statistics from the World Health Organization (WHO) show that over 35 million people have HIV/AIDS infections. This amounts to approximately 1 percent of the world’s adults between the ages of 15 and 49 years old. Each year, more than 2 million people contract new HIV infections.
For 30 years, scientists have been trying to make an HIV/AIDS vaccine. The latest progress could serve to accelerate the research and development. The new prototype, which is designed with two HIV vaccine vector candidates from Chimpanzee adenoviruses, may be able to be used in human trials.
“Discovery of an effective vaccine against HIV is one of the greatest challenges in medical research,” George Dickson, the lead researcher from the School of Biological Sciences at Royal Holloway, said. “Our work makes a contribution to the growing and profound body of knowledge about the nature of protective immune responses required for an effective AIDS vaccine. But success will require multidisciplinary efforts like the U.K. [HIV Vaccine Consortium] to take discoveries in the lab onwards through pre-clinical testing and manufacture, into early human trials.”
