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European research
Successive French governments have supported a considerable vaccine research programme through the ANRS (national AIDS research agency) and have given direct financial support to Aventis Pasteur for HIV vaccine development.
The European Commission ran a ‘European Vaccine against AIDS’ programme from 1989 which has evolved into a public-private partnership, the EuroVacc Foundation, which is developing vaccine candidates with Aventis Pasteur based on subtype C viral sequences. The first clinical trials under this programme are due in 2003.
A broader European Union initiative is under way to support research on HIV, malaria and tuberculosis in the context of global poverty reduction, which includes proposals for a 'common platform' for clinical trials across and beyond European centres. The EC has been a major funder of the South African Medical Research Council's preparatory work for HIV vaccine trials.
In the UK, the Medical Research Council's AIDS Directed Programme set up in the 1980s ran in two directions, towards treatments and towards vaccines. The vaccine component led to a first Phase I clinical trial in the early 1990s and the MRC's Clinical Trials Unit is now an active participant in EuroVacc.
During the programme, the MRC convened a working group to look at the ethical and social implications of vaccine trials in human beings. This reported in 1991, identifying a number of the key issues, and has been influential in other countries, including the USA and globally, through WHO and UNAIDS.
The most advanced HIV vaccine programme currently supported by the MRC is that headed by Professor Andrew McMichael at Oxford University. His team, co-funded by IAVI, is working in partnership with the University of Nairobi towards full-scale clinical trials of a candidate vaccine designed to protect Kenyans against subtype A variants of HIV. The vaccine approach is described more fully in the HIV & AIDS Treatments Directory and has been taken into Phase I clinical trials in Oxford, Nairobi, and London, with further trials planned in Uganda.
In 2001, the MRC adopted an internal strategy for AIDS vaccine research which includes support for additional work on mucosal vaccines (targeted at preventing sexual transmission).
Details of MRC funded research can be found on the Community of Science web site at http://www.cos.com; the MRC's own home page is at http://www.mrc.ac.uk. European Community HIV funding can be reviewed through http://www.cordis.lu