Govt pitches in for AIDS vaccine

Our News Bureau - Mumbai

The Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Ministry of Science & Technology, Government of India and the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) signed an agreement to design HIV vaccine candidates. 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. "This new partnership will broaden ongoing efforts in India to find an AIDS vaccine," said Seth Berkley, CEO and President of IAVI. "With our long-term Indian collaborators, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare through the National AIDS Control Organisation and the Indian Council of Medical Research, IAVI has successfully conducted two Phase I clinical trials in the country."

The DBT-IAVI Programme will complement the work of IAVI's Neutralising Antibody Consortium (NAC), a team of internationally recognised scientists working on the neutralising antibody challenge. "DBT brings enormous strengths in peptide and protein design to this collaboration with IAVI," said Dennis Burton, Scientific Director of the NAC. 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. 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.