Pharmaceutical giant pulls plug on Aids vaccine trial
A promising experimental Aids vaccine failed to work in a large international test, leading the US-based developer to halt the study, it has been revealed.
Pharmaceutical giant Merck said it is ending enrolment and vaccination of volunteers in the study, which was partly funded by the National Institutes of Health in the US.
It was a high-profile failure in the quest to develop a vaccine to prevent Aids.
Merck’s vaccine was the furthest along and was closely watched by experts in the field.
Officials at the company, based in Whitehouse Station, New Jersey, said 24 of 741 volunteers who got the vaccine in one segment of the experiment later became infected with HIV, the virus that causes Aids.
In a comparison group of volunteers who got dummy shots, 21 of 762 participants also became infected.
Michael Zwick, an HIV researcher at Scripps Research Institute, said the vaccine’s failure is unfortunate, but he said it is too soon to know if other vaccines using the same strategy would also fail.
The volunteers in the experiment were all free of HIV at the start, but they were at high risk for getting the virus. Most were homosexual men or female sex workers.
They were all repeatedly counselled about how to reduce their risk of HIV infections, including use of condoms, according to Merck.
