A Boost For HIV Vaccine Research

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http://pubs.acs.org/cen/news/84/i30/8430grant.html

A Boost For HIV Vaccine Research

Gates Foundation awards $287 million to global network of 165 researchers

Everts

HIV vaccine research just got a $287 million boost from the Bill & Melinda

Gates Foundation. A global network of 165 scientists from 19 countries will

be given the money in the form of 16 grants over five years to develop new

vaccine leads and improve upon existing candidates. It's the largest private

investment in HIV vaccine research to date. In comparison, the National

Institutes of Health has spent $3.9 billion in this area since the 1989.

" I'm really thrilled, as are all our collaborators, " says Leo Stamatatos of

the Seattle Biomedical Research Institute. He is the lead researcher on a

$19.4 million grant that will use computational chemistry to develop mimics

of HIV antigens that could elicit the production of antibodies in humans,

and hopefully, protection from the virus.

Stamatatos' team will make use of Rosetta, a macromolecular design and

prediction program developed by University of Washington biochemist

Baker. Individuals around the world can also contribute to this project by

donating their personal computer's idle time to run calculations over the

Internet.

" We previously used Rosetta to design proteins with novel structures and are

excited now to be designing proteins that could be powerful vaccines, " Baker

says.

Development of an HIV vaccine, touted by health officials as the best way to

control the AIDS epidemic, has been a challenging enterprise. After two

decades of research toward an HIV vaccine, only a single vaccine candidate,

VaxGen's AIDSVAX, has completed full–scale human testing, but it proved

ineffective. During the past four years, the number of vaccine candidates in

human clinical trials rose past 30, but the science behind the candidates is

similar.

Existing candidates are based on a hypothesis that protection from HIV might

be gained by eliciting cell–mediated immune response. If this hypothesis

fails, the pipeline of potential vaccines could dry up. The Gates Foundation

grants aim to provide funding for a wider variety of vaccine–development

strategies. For example, researchers will try to make broadly neutralizing

antibodies, since variability on the virus' exterior makes it extremely

difficult to create a vaccine that provides protection against all HIV

strains.

In addition to searching for new vaccine leads, some of the funded projects

aim to improve upon existing candidates. Ho at Diamond AIDS

Research Center in Manhattan and colleagues will spend $24.7 million looking

for ways to present carefully selected HIV peptide fragments to immune

system cells to stimulate protection. The group will also study how to use

glycolipids to improve the immune response, Ho says. " These compounds show

great potential. "

In the past, HIV vaccine research has been pursued by independent teams

working in relative isolation. The Gates funding aims to foster

collaboration among the teams involved in the initiative by providing

software that allows sharing of results in real time.

" The spirit of the HIV vaccine enterprise is openness and collaboration. All

the experiments that groups will be conducting will be open to everyone, "

Stamatatos says. " The money will let us test a lot of different antigens,

allow us to test them rapidly, and let us really be able to compare and get

information about what everyone else is finding. "

Chemical & Engineering News

ISSN 0009-2347

Copyright © 2006 American Chemical Society