/ 22 July 2009

Enough funds for Aids vaccine research

A Medical Research Council (MRC) research initiative is still receiving government funding for clinical trials on two Aids vaccines launched in South Africa on Monday, the project’s director said.

Elise Levendal, the director of the South African Aids Vaccine Initiative (SAAVI), said she wanted to set the record straight after reports that the government had cut funding on research on the Aids vaccines.

”We are signing a new agreement with the Department of Health. They have notified us of further funding of R35-million for next three years.”

The first clinical trial of Aids vaccines designed and developed in South Africa was launched in Cape Town on Monday.

The trials will be conducted by the SAAVI at Crossroads, Cape Town and Soweto, Johannesburg. Trials are currently being carried out among 12 people at three sites in Boston in the United States.

According to a report on Monday, quoting Anna-Lise Williamson, an Aids researcher at the University of Cape Town, the clinical vaccine trial that began on Monday would continue with US money.

Williamson said the Department of Science and Technology had stopped funding her research this year and that power utility Eskom’s contract for funding ended last year and was not renewed.

Levendal confirmed that the DST had not renewed its funding of the project.

”Science and technology had signed an agreement to give us R15-million in 2007. In the end only R8-million was transferred. So we suffered a lot in that time. The funding was only enough to last to December 2007.

”The DST informed us that it would no longer fund HIV research and development through SAAVI, but through a platform known as Lifelab.”

Eskom had also cancelled its funding to SAAVI, after running into financial difficulties in 2007. As a result the numbers of basic and lab scientists had to be reduced.

SAAVI now had a collaborative agreement with the Health Department and the Italian Foreign Affairs Department, which had pledged R38-million over the next three years.

The trials aim to determine the immune response of HIV-negative people to the vaccines, SAAVI MVA-C (MVA) and SAAVI DNA-C2 (DNA), which were developed by scientists at the University of Cape Town.

The vaccines were designed to represent HIV subtype C, the virus circulating in South Africa, where more than five million people are infected with HIV.

In the trial, the DNA vaccine, which is constructed out of DNA, will tell the body to make a small amount of some of the proteins found in HIV.

The body’s immune system may then recognise these proteins and prepare itself to fight HIV. The MVA vaccine is made out of a virus called Modified Vaccinia Ankara. It is similar to the smallpox vaccine used worldwide. This vaccine will also tell the body to make small amounts of some proteins found in HIV. These proteins may trigger an immune response in the body.

MRC president Anthony MBewu said the development of the vaccines was a ”giant leap” for science and technology in South Africa.

”We have had many clinical trials of HIV vaccines in SA over the past 10 years, but this is the first using a vaccine that was designed in this country,” MBewu said at the Emavundleni Prevention Centre at Crossroads, outside Cape Town.

MBewu said developing a vaccine against HIV was a greater challenge than putting a man on the moon.

”The wealthiest and most technologically advanced nation on earth, the United States, took 10 years to achieve the success of the Apollo 11 moon landing, but it will take our global vaccine enterprise many more than 10 years and billions of dollars of investment to develop a successful HIV vaccine.”

He said when a vaccine was eventually developed, it would ”rank among the greatest achievements of mankind in the 21st century”.

”South Africa will be at the heart of that endeavour.”

MBewu said South Africa had spent around R250-million on developing the vaccines. He said the capacity that SAAVI had developed in HIV vaccine
research and development would ensure South Africa had a better chance designing and manufacturing vaccines against other infectious diseases, such as new strains of HIV or A/H1N1 (swine flu) or H5N1 influenza (avian flu).

Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the vaccine’s launch was ”a very important event”.

He applauded the Aids research partnerships between the United States and South Africa. South Africa, he said, had some of the finest scientists in the world.

”Some of the most important Aids research has been from the partnership we’ve had over the years,” he said, adding that developing a vaccine would not be easy. We have to develop a vaccine that does even better than the natural immune system.”

Deputy Health Minister Molefi Sefularo said it was important to ”remain conscious” that the trials were about individuals and families affected by HIV.

”It is about a breadwinner, a complete family or an incomplete family,” Sefularo said.–Sapa