MicroGeneSys' AIDS Vaccine Future Is In Doubt

MicroGeneSys' highly-touted gp160-based AIDS vaccine, VaxSyn, "did not demonstrate statistically-significant clinical benefit" in a study conducted by researchers at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in the USA.

Company president Robert Scherrer said that MicroGeneSys was conducting other studies but that this one was pivotal. He declined to comment on whether the company might now drop its major product. Several years ago, VaxSyn gained notoriety when MicroGeneSys tried to get federal funding for a large study without waiting for the results of the smaller study which was just completed.

In early 1994, after more than a year of controversy and pressure from government health officials, AIDS researchers and activists, the US Defense Department finally abandoned plans for its $20 million trial of VaxSyn, and diverted the money to more general AIDS research. Micro-GeneSys came under fire when it was disclosed that the company had hired powerful lobbyists to persuade Congress to award the Defense Department the money for the trial. After protests by the likes of then-NIH director Bernadine Healey, the Pentagon said that the money should be used to test several different vaccine candidates, but the company blocked this by demanding $10 million in return for supplying its product for the trial, according to media reports at the time.