Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana did not announce a budget allocation to plug the gap created by the termination of USAid funding to HIV/Aids organisations (Photo by Luke Dray/Getty Images)
The South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC) is leading a new scientific research team on the African continent in the race to find a vaccine for HIV/Aids.
The research team, named the BRILLIANT Consortium (Bringing Innovation to Clinical and Laboratory Research to End HIV in Africa Through New Vaccine Technology), held its first meeting in Cape Town on Monday to mark the beginning of a “ground-breaking journey into the future of HIV research in Africa”.
The team is funded by the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar) through the United States Agency International Development (USAID) and is led predominantly by African women scientists. The team was announced as the successful applicant to USAID’s HIV Vaccine Innovation, Science, and Technology Acceleration in Africa award last September.
It will receive up to $45 million over five years, providing more opportunities for scientists in sub-Saharan Africa to advance HIV vaccine research and development, said the SAMRC’s president, Glenda Gray.
The consortium includes top South African scientists — Carolyn Williamson, Penny Moore, Linda-Gail Bekker and Nigel Garrett — as well as leading scientists from Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Mozambique.
“A lot of the HIV science programme is driven by US researchers. This is the first time USAID has awarded a grant [for scientific research] to a local organisation,” Gray said.
“It’s an important grant because it gives us the capability to discover, design, evaluate and maybe develop HIV vaccines. It’s a significant injection of money to deliver basic science capability in Africa.”
She said the consortium had competed with five other teams to win the funding, and that the team would start its research by conducting basic scientific laboratory work and vaccine discovery before producing mRNA vaccines that target certain epitopes found in HIV infection.
“We are going to test them in animal models and in humans. We are going to do an annual vaccine trial with about 30 to 50 participants.”
Gray said the grant would go a long way to advance the search for a vaccine on the continent, which does not have vast scientific capacity and support to conduct research.
“In Africa, there are about 198 scientists per 100 000 population, and in England there are 420 scientists per 100 000. There is just a lack of capacity, research infrastructure and a lack of funding.”
Asked whether she was confident there would be a scientific breakthrough to find a vaccine Gray responded: “We need a vaccine. Basically the only way we can control this epidemic is to have a vaccine but at this moment in time no one has been cured of HIV so we don’t know what are the pelmets of protection, there are no good animal models, so basically it is trial and error.
“It’s a wonderful, exciting opportunity. And it’s nice that scientists from Africa can work together to solve a vexing issue that we haven’t yet been able to unravel. So there’s a lot of hope that we will make progress.”
US consul general Todd Haskell said his country’s approach was to localise American assistance. “It is based on our belief that African scientists, leaders and people are the best source of solutions to the health and other challenges facing Africa and our global community today … and that the most useful thing the United States can do is to partner with Africans and support their work.”