Indian HIV/AIDS vaccine in critical phase of human studies

An Indian vaccine against HIV/AIDS is currently undergoing the final stage of phase I of clinical studies, reports said.

Tuberculosis Research Centre (TRC), Chennai, and the National AIDS Research Institute (NARI), Pune, are in the process of testing the anti HIV vaccine to the last 32 candidates enrolled in trials.

TBC-M4, an MVA (vector)-based potential AIDS vaccine was developed by Kolkata-based scientist Sekhar Chakrabarti.

Preclinical data on TBC-M4 showed that the vaccine was safe and generated some immunity, in humans.

However, the immunity reponse in the volunteers was not adequate enough to prevent infection, and even that level of immunity was seen reducing after one year.

The current study of TBC-M4 aims to improve upon the results achieved with the vector-based vaccine.

TRC reported the first significant progress of the vector based vaccine in the clinical trials in 2008, leaving scope for improving the vaccine substantially.

TRC, a permanent centre of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), had done the trials along with National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) and the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI).

TRC and NARI have recruited 16 healthy volunteers for the second round of trials.

Six of these volunteers have already received two shots of the DNA vaccine at the beginning of the trial and subsequently after a month, followed by the MVA vaccine in the third month.

Six patients received two doses of the MVA vaccine. All of them will receive the last shot of MVA this month. Four other volunteers would receive placebos (shots of saline water).

The health of the volunteers will be monitored for the next one year.

In September, researchers announced one of the first breakthroughs when they revealed that a two-vaccine combination cut the risk of becoming affected with HIV by more than 31% in a trial of over 16,000 volunteers in Thailand.

There have been at least nine MVA vaccine candidates that have been tested or are being tested in labs around the world.

Indian scientists said that they have learnt to expect the unexpected in the HIV vaccine  search to generate an effective vaccine for AIDS.

More than 33.4 million people are living with HIV/AIDS, with more than 2.5 million in India, it has been estimated. The quality of life of people with HIV has improved due to the beneficial effects of antiretroviral therapy given free of cost by several governments.

However, antiretroviral therapy (ART) is a huge financial burden on the government leving to channelize more resources to discover an effective vaccine against HIV/AIDS.