NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals (GSK Biologicals) and the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) today announced a public-private partnership to develop an AIDS vaccine using a promising new technology. The collaboration – the first-ever in AIDS vaccine research between IAVI and a major vaccine company – will facilitate early research and development of GSK’s non-human primate adenovirus vaccine vector as an enabling component of an effective AIDS vaccine.

Under the agreement, IAVI and GSK will collaborate to advance the development of the technology, which uses non-infectious vaccine vectors to stimulate specific immune responses directed against HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The vectors are derived from adenoviruses, originally isolated from non-human primates, which have been engineered to be non-infectious and capable of efficiently delivering genes expressing HIV proteins to the immune system. IAVI will contribute technical expertise and funding, and GSK and IAVI researchers will form a joint R&D team.

The IAVI-GSK collaborative research will initially focus on vaccines designed to elicit immune responses against variants of HIV that circulate predominantly in Africa, although the goal of the collaboration is to develop vaccines that would be applicable worldwide. After pre-clinical evaluation, GSK Biologicals and IAVI plan to conduct Phase I clinical trials of the vaccine candidates. The partners hope this will be the first phase of a collaboration that could be much broader. Both GSK Biologicals and IAVI are committed to making any successful vaccine available as quickly as possible to developing countries at affordable prices.
Story found here.