USA's NIAID stops Pave 100 HIV vaccine trial but may consider smaller study

Less than a year after drug major Merck & Co dropped development of its AIDS vaccine candidate, V520 (Marketletter November 19, 2007), the USA's government's research facility, the National Institutes of Health, has abandoned the testing of a similar product.

After soliciting and considering broad input from the scientific and HIV advocacy communities, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the NIH, has determined that it will not conduct the HIV vaccine study known as PAVE 100.

However, the NIAID believes the vaccine developed by its Vaccine Research Center is scientifically intriguing and sufficiently different from previously-tested HIV vaccines to consider testing it in a smaller, more focused clinical study. Therefore, the NIAID says it will entertain a proposal for an alternative study with one specific goal: to determine if the vaccine regimen significantly lowers viral load - the amount of HIV in the blood of vaccinated individuals who may later become infected with the virus.