The University of Maryland School of Medicine’s Institute of Human Virology will receive $23.4 million from a consortium of funding sources to pay for preclinical development of an HIV/AIDS vaccine candidate. Gov. Martin O’Malley and Dr. Robert Gallo, who founded the institute, made the announcement Thursday in Baltimore. The grants include $16.8 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The U.S. Army’s Military HIV Research Program is contributing $2.2 million. The vaccine candidate immunogen is designed to elicit strongly protective antibody responses across the spectrum of HIV-1 strains. – AP
