Glaxo and IAVI to develop HIV vaccine
A public-private partnership to develop a vaccine to prevent AIDS was announced on Tuesday by GlaxoSmithKline and the not-for-profit International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI).
In a statement, GSK said the collaboration—the first between IAVI and a major vaccine company—would facilitate early research and development of its “promising” adenovirus vaccine vector technology.
The vectors are derived from adenoviruses, originally isolated from non-human primates, which have been engineered to be non-infectious and capable of efficiently delivering genes expressing HIV proteins to the immune system.
IAVI will contribute technical expertise and funding, and GSK and IAVI researchers will form a joint R&D team.
GSK said the research would initially focus on HIV strains circulating in Africa, although the goal was to develop vaccines for use worldwide. After pre-clinical evaluation, GSK Biologicals and IAVI would conduct phase I clinical trials of the vaccine candidates.
GSK is pursuing a four-pronged approach to find an effective AIDS vaccine, said Jean Stephenne, President and General Manager of GSK Biologicals. “Our objective in the next three years is to bring these vaccine candidates into the clinic and then decide which we want to pursue in phase III later on.”
The collaboration with IAVI would accelerate the development and was particularly important with a complicated virus like HIV with different strains in different continents.
Stephenne added: “The model is that for the poorest countries ... we will make (the vaccine) available at a reasonable price.”
“This is a new kind of partnership that involves real scientific collaboration to accelerate the development of an AIDS vaccine,” said Seth Berkley, President and CEO of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative.
He added in a statement: “We hope this will be the beginning of a long-term partnership that brings together some of the most promising technologies in the field. We cannot think of a better partner, given GSK’s long-standing commitment to addressing diseases of developing countries.”
The announcement comes in the lead up to the G8 summit in Scotland in July, where world leaders are expected to build on previous commitments to expand support for research of vaccines against AIDS, as well as other developing-country diseases such as Tuberculosis and malaria.
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