New HIV vaccine candidates show promise in monkeys

"The quest for a vaccine against AIDS is gaining momentum, with research published Wednesday identifying promising new candidates that protected monkeys against a powerful strain of the virus and that soon could be tested in humans," the Wall Street Journal reports (McKay, 1/5). Researchers treated different groups of rhesus monkeys with several different two-stage vaccine combinations and then exposed them to a simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) that was different than the one used to make the vaccines, according to Nature (Callaway, 1/4).

"The experimental vaccine regimens reduced the monkeys' likelihood of becoming infected per exposure to SIV by 80 to 83 percent compared to a placebo vaccine regimen. Further, in those monkeys that did become infected, the experimental vaccine regimens substantially reduced the amount of virus in the blood compared to controls," an NIH press release states (1/4). "The researchers plan to test that combination in people 'in the near future,'" Dan Barouch, a professor of medicine at Harvard's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center who led the study, said, Bloomberg reports (Bennett, 1/4).