Zambia starts first preventive HIV vaccine trial

This is the first preventive HIV vaccine trial to be conducted in Zambia, and will take place at the Zambia Emory HIV Research Project Center in Lusaka. It is an early-stage, multi-national trial, also being conducted at three sites in South Africa and Uganda.

The vaccine candidate was developed by Seattle’s Targeted Genetics. tgAAC09 is based on HIV subtype C, the subtype of the virus most prevalent in southern Africa. It is designed as a preventive vaccine, intended to protect people not infected with HIV from contracting the disease. It is designed to elicit two different types of immune responses – an antibody response and a cell-mediated response.

Under the terms of a public-private collaboration, the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) is funding development, preclinical and clinical studies to test the vaccine. The early-stage trial follows positive safety data received from the phase I trial conducted over the past two years in Belgium, Germany, and India where volunteers received a lower-dose range.