Gates grant to help with AIDS vaccine research

But Dr. Robert Gallo, who heads the Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and who co-discovered the HIV virus that causes AIDS, said the worst thing that could happen is a headline that says: “We have a vaccine for AIDS. That?s not the case.”

“We have a vaccine candidate that is extra interesting and certainly unique in its properties,” Gallo told a State House news conference announcing the grant.

AIDS has fallen off the front pages in recent years, but it kills 250,000 a month worldwide, “a tsunami a month,” Gallo said, compared with the 200,000 who died in the Asian tsunami of 2004.

This grant is for both basic research and development of an AIDS vaccine, said Dave Wilkins, chief operating officer of the Institute of Human Virology.

For two decades, Gallo has been a world-renowned figure in AIDS research ? he developed the first blood test for HIV. He wowed a room of state officials and reporters with a short course on AIDS and the failed attempts to find a vaccine against the deadly killer that destroys the body?s immune system.

Early attempts to immunize people against the HIV virus by using the live virus or killing the virus, as vaccines for other diseases do, were not successful, Gallo said.

“You?re left with two hands tied behind you?re back, but we still have our teeth and our feet,” Gallo said.

The problem with HIV is that it constantly adapts to different forms in the body.

With AIDS, “when you get infected, you?re infected forever,” Gallo said.

The most promising results involve preventing the connectors on the outside of the virus from attaching themselves to cells, Gallo said. The new vaccine is far enough along that the technology has been licensed by Wyeth Pharmaceuticals through the institute?s commercial arm, Profectus BioSciences.

Gallo said they are hoping for positive results from clinical tests on monkeys early next year.

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