Newswise — As the global HIV/AIDS community prepares to commemorate World AIDS Day 2010 on December 1, there is a growing recognition that the development of an HIV vaccine is a vital step in battling the rising incidence of AIDS around the world.
Few people appreciate this fact as keenly as Dr. Robert T. McNally, president and CEO of GeoVax Labs, an Atlanta-based biopharmaceutical firm that is developing vaccines that prevent and fight HIV infections. Recently, Dr. McNally outlined some key points surrounding the importance of finding an HIV vaccine and his company’s efforts at developing such a vaccine.
A critical issue facing the war against AIDS, says Dr. McNally, is the current lack of a method to prevent the incidence of HIV infection, which stands at 2.7 million new cases worldwide and 55,000 to 60,000 new cases in the US annually. Also, the use of oral medications, for individuals infected with HIV, on a long-term basis is costly and can trigger substantial side effects.
These issues have motivated GeoVax to develop a vaccine candidate made possible by work at the CDC, the NIH, and Emory University under the direction of Dr. Harriet Robinson, GeoVax Chief Scientific Officer. The company has a preventative vaccine that is now in a Phase 2a trial, which is slated to be fully enrolled by the end of 2010 or early 2011. GeoVax is also in a Phase 1 therapeutic trial directed toward individuals who are positive for HIV, with the intent of being able to wean them off their oral medication and allow their own immune system to fight the HIV virus.
The eventual goal, Dr. McNally says, is to facilitate global access to the HIV vaccine—a step that will most likely be undertaken by a large pharmaceutical firm that will license or acquire the rights to the vaccine from GeoVax. Currently GeoVax’s vaccine is optimized for “Clade B”, comprising the populations of North America and Europe; the company is initiating research for other clades comprising the rest of the globe. One factor fueling the company’s enthusiasm is a significant finding, made about a year ago as part of a preventative trial in Thailand, which demonstrated definitively for the first time that it is indeed possible for a vaccine to give protection against HIV.
To watch a video of Dr. McNally, please visit the following link:http://irgnews.com/coi/GOVX/GeoVax-Labs-World-AIDS-Day-2010
For more information about GeoVax Labs, and their efforts to develop therapeutic and preventative HIV vaccines, please visit www.geovax.com to learn more.
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