A promising new HIV vaccine created at The Wistar Institute has received funding for clinical development aimed at moving the vaccine into human clinical trials as soon as possible.
With $13.3 million in funding over five years, the planned trials will be conducted under the auspices of the Integrated Preclinical/Clinical AIDS Vaccine Development Program of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The Wistar Institute scientists will collaborate with researchers at Emory University, the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard School of Public Health, MRC/UVRI Uganda Research Unit, and the National Institute for Communicable Diseases in South Africa. The start date for the project is September 1.
“We believe our vaccine, which is built on a novel chimpanzee virus backbone, has unique immunological advantages over other HIV vaccines currently in testing,” says Hildegund C.J. Ertl, M.D., professor and Immunology Program leader at The Wistar Institute. Ertl, principal investigator for the newly funded project, is also director of the Wistar Institute Vaccine Center. “In preclinical studies, the vaccine induced a vigorous immune response in monkeys, and we are hopeful it will do the same in humans.”
Many vaccines currently in development are based on modified human adenoviruses, known as vectors, that incorporate genetic elements from target pathogens to stimulate a protective immune response to those pathogens. These vaccines can work well, but there is an unaddressed problem with this approach, which is that many people receiving the vaccines will have pre-existing immunity to the human viruses upon which they are based, largely negating their effectiveness. About 45 percent of adults in the United States, for example, have pre-existing immunity to a strain of human adenovirus being used as an HIV vaccine vector in current clinical trials.