Monday November 17 1:55 PM EST
Successful AIDS Vaccine May Be Decades Away
SINGAPORE (Reuters) -- The development of a successful vaccine against the symptoms of AIDS, or Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, could take decades but will be key to controlling the disease, Nobel Laureate David Baltimore said on Monday.
Baltimore said it was extremely unlikely a vaccine could be found to prevent infection by HIV (human immunodeficiency virus), which leads to AIDS, but said it ought to be possible to develop a vaccine to protect against the symptoms of AIDS.
"A good vaccine needn't actually prevent infection, it can prevent disease and that's critically important," Baltimore, president of the California Institute of Technology, said at a lecture in Singapore.
Baltimore, who won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1975 for his work on genetics, was appointed chairman of the AIDS Vaccine Research Committee in the United States this year.
He and Robert Gallo, regarded as something of a father figure in the field of AIDS research, are attending a two-day symposium celebrating the 10th anniversary of Singapore's Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology.
Baltimore said some people infected with HIV have now lived with infection for more than 20 years without developing AIDS.
"We need something that is safe, that will particularly be used widely to protect large populations, that can't have any degree of risk in itself," he said.
Asked how long it would take for a successful vaccine to be developed, Baltimore said it was "more likely to be measured in decades than in single years."
Baltimore said research on primates had shown immunisation against a virus similar to AIDS in humans was possible.
Such a vaccine could work with other preventive measures and help to curb the sharp rise of the disease in places like Asia.
"The rate of increase in Asia brings the number of new infections per year in Asia to a point where it is already higher than any other area in the world," he said.
The rate of increase had tapered off in the United States, Europe, Latin America and Africa, he added.
In 1996, there were some 23 million people living with the HIV virus and about 1.5 million deaths worldwide.
Baltimore said AIDS was rapidly becoming the world's major infectious disease, now only behind tuberculosis and malaria.
He said progress in multiple drug therapy had managed to suppress viruses to undetectable levels in large sections of patients but some people were now failing to respond.
"I don't see any other way of putting (the epidemic) back into its box without a vaccine," he said.
Doctors who have been campaigning to test a vaccine against the HIV virus said earlier they would have a proposal for U.S. government health regulators by next month.
Some doctors have volunteered to test the live virus vaccine on themselves but Baltimore told Reuters tests on humans at this stage were unlikely due to the danger of infection. |
