Partnership to develop NexGen AIDS vaccine

New Delhi, May 2 (UNI) The Department of Biotechnology (DBT) and the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) today signed an agreement to address a major obstacle in AIDS vaccine development-- the design of candidate vaccines to elicit neutralising antibodies against HIV.

A new Indian Medicinal Chemistry Programme, co-sponsored and co-funded by IAVI and the Department of Biotechnology, will comprise top Indian and US scientists tasked with accelerating the pace of AIDS vaccine discovery and developing creative concepts for the next generation of AIDS vaccines.

Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal said vaccine research was so critical that his Ministry and the Health Ministry had joined hands to provide the necessary support.

''The Department of Biotechnology is delighted to be a part of the global search for an efficacious AIDS vaccine,'' DBT Secretary M K Bhan said.

''Through these kinds of biotechnology ventures involving international collaborations and the sharing of scientific knowledge, we can hope to solve the complex biomedical problems of our times,'' he added.

According to Seth Berkley, CEO and President of IAVI, the new partnership would broaden the ongoing efforts in India to find an AIDS vaccine.

The Indian Programme will complement the work of IAVI's Neutralizing Antibody Consortium (NAC), a team of internationally recognised scientists working on the neutralising antibody challenge.

Researchers believe an ideal AIDS vaccine must evoke an antibody response that can block HIV from entering healthy cells, as well as reduce the amount of viral dissemination through a cell-mediated immune response to HIV-infected cells.

Yet today, virtually all current vaccine candidates in the pipeline are based on cell-mediated immune responses alone, failing to target the second critical arm of the human immune system.

The first component of the DBT-IAVI Programme will consist of a collaboration of principal investigators from different academic research laboratories to design novel HIV antigens.

The investigators include Professor Virander S Chauhan of the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, New Delhi; Prof Raghavan Varadarajan of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore; Dr Stephen Kaminsky of IAVI's AIDS Vaccine Development Laboratory, New York; and Dr Philip Dawson of The Scripps Research Institute, California.

IAVI and DBT may select additional principal investigators, contract researchers, or partners in India to participate in the Programme, and will discuss ways to build infrastructure for subsequent HIV/AIDS vaccine candidate evaluation.

At a later stage, based on their initial research and vaccine design concepts, both partners expect to work with an Indian manufacturer to assist with high throughput synthesis, antigen chemical characterisation and potency evaluation of proposed AIDS vaccine candidates.

IAVI is a global non-profit organisation whose mission is to ensure the development of safe, effective, accessible, preventive HIV vaccines for use throughout the world.

Founded in 1996 and operational in 24 countries, IAVI and its network of collaborators research and develop vaccine candidates.

Its financial and in-kind supporters include the Alfred P Sloan Foundation and the Bill&Melinda Gates Foundation, among others.

UNI