WASHINGTON (AFP) — A quarter of a century since the virus that causes AIDS was identified, a vaccine against the deadly disease remains frustratingly out of reach despite a well-funded global effort to find a cure.
“Nearly a billion dollars is spent globally on HIV/AIDS research annually, and yet the sobering reality is that at present there are no promising candidates for an HIV vaccine,” Bruce Walker of Harvard Medical School wrote in the May 9 edition of the journal Science.
The research community was dealt a heavy blow in September when the clinical trials of the most promising and widely tested HIV vaccine candidate were halted after it turned out to be a failure.
Early results showed that, rather than preventing HIV or reducing the viral load in people who received it, the experimental vaccine may have increased their chances of become infected.
“We share in the …
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