HIV vaccine: historic clinical trial begins in South Africa
The first HIV vaccine efficacy study to launch anywhere in seven years is now testing whether an experimental vaccine regimen safely prevents HIV infection among South African adults. The study, called HVTN 702, involves a new version of the only HIV vaccine candidate ever shown to provide some protection against the virus. HVTN 702 aims to enroll 5,400 men and women, making it the largest and most advanced HIV vaccine clinical trial to take place in South Africa, where more than 1,000 people become infected with HIV every day.
This study is being conducted at 15 research centres in South Africa. Protocol Chair is Professor Glenda Gray, President of SAMRC and Adjunct Member of the IDM, with co-chairs [all local researchers] Dr Fatima Laher of the Perinatal HIV Research Unit at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital, Dr Mookho Malahleha of the Setshaba Research Centre in Soshanguve, and Professor Linda-Gail Bekker, Director of the Desmond Tutu HIV Centrebased in the IDM at UCT. Professor Bekker is also President of the International AIDS Society and serves on a number of other national and international committees and boards. She participated in a question and answer session about the new vaccine trial, on the SABC1 news channel primetime programme at 08h00, 30th November 2016.
HVTN 702 is based on the vaccine investigated in the RV144 clinical trial in Thailand led by the US Military HIV Research Program and the Thai Ministry of Health. The Thai trial delivered landmark results in 2009 and the experimental vaccine regimen it tested was found to be 31.2 percent effective in preventing HIV infection over the 3.5-year follow-up period after vaccination.
In the HVTN 702 study, the design, schedule and components of the RV144 vaccine regimen have been modified in an attempt to increase the magnitude and duration of the protective immune responses elicited by the vaccine. Results are expected in late 2020.
Funding the trial are the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the South African Medical Research Council (MRC).
"If deployed alongside our current armory of proven HIV prevention tools, a safe and effective vaccine could be the final nail in the coffin for HIV," said Dr Anthony S. Fauci, Director, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), National Institutes of Health. "This launch represents a significant HIV prevention milestone. In earlier studies, this vaccine regimen improved on many of the antibody responses to the types of HIV strains circulating in South Africa, providing us the scientific basis to conduct this pivotal trial." says Dr Larry Corey, principal investigator at the HIV Vaccine Trials Network (HVTN) which is part of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre, Seattle, responsible overall for the conduct of HVTN 702.
Adapted from, and from where further details are available: