HIV vaccine made from whole virus finishes promising Phase I trials

A Canadian researcher, Dr. C. Kang and his team at the University of Western Ontario, have produced an anti-HIV vaccine that is somewhat different from previous ones. The vaccine has just finished the FDA Phase I Clinical Trials and shown promising results. Next, it will have to begin Phase II trials. The previous vaccines, that were made to try to prevent HIV infection, just used selected antigens (parts of the virus that would, presumably, cause a good immune response in humans) after injection of the antigens. These were just tiny fragments of the virus, not the complete particle itself. However, these earlier vaccines either didn’t produce a strong enough immune response to confer immunity, or didn’t produce high enough antibody titers in enough of the vaccinees, or had undesirable side effects. This vaccine is made from the whole, killed virus. Since HIV mutates so rapidly, the researchers needed to select...