Johannesburg | Monday
HUMAN trials on a new Aids vaccine will start simultaneously in the United States and in South Africa’s eastern port city of Durban in March 2002, it was reported on Sunday.
The Sunday Independent reported that scientists were selecting 48 HIV-negative volunteers to take part in the phase one trials at Durban’s RK Kahn Hospital. It quoted Mark Colvin from South Africa’s Medical Research Council (MRC) as saying the study should be completed in early 2003, some 11 months after the vaccine is first administered to the volunteers.
Colvin said some of the participants would receive placebos.
“Some of the substances injected will not contain any vaccine. Neither doctor nor patient will know who is receiving the active vaccine. This will only be known … when the study is completed.”
The vaccine, being developed by the MRC and the US company Alphavax, has been designed to target Type C HIV infection, the HIV strain that afflicts 97% of South African sufferers and is also most prevalent in the rest of southern Africa.
Researchers hope however that it will work against all strains of the virus.
South Africa has the highest number of people in the world with HIV with 4,7-million people or one in nine infected with the virus.
More than 30 vaccine candidates have been tested in phase one clinical trials since HIV was identified as the cause of Aids nearly 20 years ago, but only one has so far progressed to phase three trials, the definitive test of a vaccine’s efficacy, involving thousands of volunteers.
Phase one trials are usually meant to determine whether the vaccine has major side effects, while phase two trials involve a larger pool of volunteers and test the vaccine to determine whether it works. – AFP