The following are excerpts from the NY TIMES, Feb 25,2003, pA23:
Official Hopes to Explain
Aids Vaccine Disparities
By Lawrence K. Altman
A top federal researcher expressed hope yesterday that the tests that his agency was planning would explain why the first large-scale trial of an AIDS vaccine found that it is more effective among African Americans and other non-Hispanic minorities than others,
The researcher, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said his institute planned to perform an array of laboratory tests on blood samples to uncover any possible immune or genetic factor that might account for the findings...
...Dr. Fauci said the findings were "provacative enough to give very good reason to consider funding a larger study of this or other AIDS vaccines among minorities," if statisticians agree that they would be worthwhile...
...The World Health Organization and the United Nations AIDS program said there was an urgent need for additional research to learn why Aidsvax seemed to work just for minorities.
Dr. Jose Esparza, the top AIDS vaccine expert for the United Nations, said it was important for scientists to learn whether the different responses to the vaccine were a result of ethnicity alone or differences in behavior patterns in ethnic groups...
...Dr. Esparza said there was a precedent for experimental vaccines that show effectiveness in particular subgroups. He cited the example of an experimental herpes vaccine that showed protection just in women in a recent study.
About an HIV vaccine, Dr. Esparza said, "we cannot take the wrong tack, believing this is just racial, when in fact it could be something else, and we have not identified it yet."...
(Glen's comments: As bleak as the Phase III trial results seem, the chances are still high that Dr. Francis and his assembled team will find the funding enabling Vaxgen to continue its work with Aidsvax, along with other vaccines.
I would not be too quick to write Vaxgen off as a viable entity.) |
