new AIDS vaccine protects monkeys

[littlewolf]

http://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/new-aids-vaccine-protects-monkeys-n385751

There's progress in the quest for an AIDS vaccine. An experimental vaccine protected half of a batch of monkeys against a virus similar to the AIDS virus, scientists reported Thursday.
The company helping develop the vaccine is already trying it in people, and vaccine experts say it takes a new approach to trying to protect against a virus that's proved almost impossible to stop.
"I think it is quite promising," said Mitchell Warren of the HIV vaccine and treatment advocacy group AVAC.

"In AVAC's 20-year history we have seen a bunch of products never get to efficacy trials. Those that have have mostly failed," said Warren, who was not involved in the latest studies.
The two studies reported in the journal Science show that a two-step vaccine not only protects half the monkeys, but that their bodies produce antibodies that can be measured and that show how well-protected the monkeys are.

We do not know for sure whether a vaccine that protects in monkeys will in fact protect in humans," said Dr. Dan Barouch of Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the Ragon Institute at Harvard, MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital.
But Barouch, who led the study, says he thinks this one may. It's because the monkeys were first vaccinated and then repeatedly given large doses of an extremely virulent monkey version of HIV called SIV. And the immune response to the vaccine was strong.

lots more at the link.

[craigmatic]

1. They've had the cure for years but they're more interested in treatment to make money.

They just came out with a pill that prevents its spread last year now this.