Gates Foundation Funds Major New Collaboration to Accelerate HIV Vaccine Development

Seattle (ots/PRNewswire) -

- Global network of 16 research teams to tackle critical vaccine
design challenges

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation today announced 16 grants
totaling US$287 million to create an international network of highly
collaborative research consortia focused on accelerating the pace of
HIV vaccine development.

The grants will support a range of innovative approaches for
designing an effective HIV vaccine, and bring together more than 165
investigators from 19 countries to tackle some of the biggest
scientific challenges facing the field.

Eleven consortia will focus on vaccine discovery, applying new
scientific knowledge and cutting-edge research techniques to create
and evaluate novel vaccine candidates. These consortia will be linked
to five central laboratories and data analysis facilities, enabling
investigators to openly share data and compare results, and allowing
the most promising vaccine approaches to be quickly prioritized for
further development.

"An HIV vaccine is our best long-term hope for controlling the
global AIDS epidemic, but it has proven to be a tremendously
difficult scientific challenge," said Dr. Jose Esparza, senior
advisor on HIV vaccines for the Gates Foundation. "We have all been
frustrated by the slow pace of progress in HIV vaccine development,
yet breakthroughs are achievable if we aggressively pursue scientific
leads and work together in new ways."

To date, most HIV vaccine research has been conducted by small
teams of investigators working independently. While important
research gains have been made, there is growing recognition that
these efforts need to be supported by new large-scale, collaborative
projects that can produce definitive answers to complex scientific
questions.

Grants Establish Vaccine Discovery Consortia, Central Facilities

The grants announced today, known collectively as the
Collaboration for AIDS Vaccine Discovery, will support the following:

-- Vaccine discovery consortia: Eleven vaccine discovery consortia will
pursue a broad range of innovative strategies for designing vaccine
candidates to trigger immune responses believed to be critical for
protection against HIV.
The consortia will focus on overcoming two of the biggest scientific
obstacles currently facing the field: designing vaccine candidates
capable of eliciting effective neutralizing antibodies to HIV, and
improving current vaccine candidates so they elicit stronger and more
durable protective cellular immune responses.
-- Central facilities: Five central facilities will be established,
including three laboratory networks for measuring the immune responses
elicited by vaccine candidates, a research specimen repository, and a
data and statistical management center.
As a condition for receiving funding, the newly-funded vaccine
discovery consortia have agreed to use the central facilities to test
vaccine candidates, share information with other investigators, and
compare results using standardized benchmarks.

"These projects bring a new level of creativity and intensity to
bear on major scientific challenges facing HIV vaccine development,"
said Dr. Nicholas Hellmann, acting director of the Gates Foundation's
HIV, TB, and Reproductive Health program. "Some of the vaccine
concepts that will be pursued have been talked about for years, but
have never been adequately studied. If successful, they could lead to
entirely new paradigms for HIV vaccine development."

"These grants signal an exciting move toward greater cooperation,
coordination, and transparency among vaccine scientists," said
Mitchell Warren, executive director of the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy
Coalition (AVAC). "AIDS vaccine advocates have long said that this
type of work is critical to accelerating work in the field, and this
is an energizing time."

In addition, the grantees are developing global access plans to
help ensure that their discoveries will be accessible and affordable
for developing countries, where the vast majority of new HIV
infections occur.

Range of Novel HIV Vaccine Approaches Supported

The grants announced today support a range of novel approaches for
developing an effective HIV vaccine. Examples of the grants include:

-- Advancing progress on neutralizing antibodies: Virtually all licensed
vaccines for other diseases are believed to work by causing the immune
system to produce neutralizing antibodies that bind to vulnerable
regions on the infection-causing agent. One research consortium will
isolate a large number of antibodies from humans and animals, screen
them for the ability to neutralize HIV, and "work backwards" from the
best antibodies to design new vaccine candidates. (Lead investigator:
Robin Weiss, University College London)
-- Using computational biology to create novel vaccine designs: One
research consortium will use state-of-the-art computer design
techniques to create synthetic molecules to trigger antibodies against
HIV. To help provide the massive computing power necessary for this
project, the consortium will partner with the Rosetta@home project,
which allows individuals around the world to donate their personal
computer's idle time to run research calculations over the Internet.
(Lead investigator: Leo Stamatatos, Seattle Biomedical Research
Institute)
-- Addressing challenges in eliciting cellular immunity: An effective HIV
vaccine may also need to elicit cellular, or T-cell, immunity. One
potential approach for eliciting cellular immunity is to modify other
viruses so they carry pieces of HIV capable of inducing an immune
response (but not capable of causing disease). One research consortium
will focus on a number of novel vectors, or "carrier" viruses, that
have been identified as promising for an HIV vaccine but have never
been tested in clinical trials. (Lead investigator: Timothy Zamb,
International AIDS Vaccine Initiative)
-- Improving vectors that elicit cellular immunity: The use of poxviruses
as vaccine vectors is supported by extensive pre-clinical and clinical
experience, and one of the projects will try to significantly improve
the ability of poxvirus vectors to stimulate cellular immune
responses. The consortium will focus on making improvements to three
poxvirus vectors that have been used in HIV vaccines, including a
modified version of the vaccinia virus that was successfully used to
eradicate smallpox. (Lead investigator: Giuseppe Pantaleo, Centre
Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois)
-- Harnessing dendritic cells: The immune system's dendritic cells are
believed to play an important role in enhancing both cellular immunity
and neutralizing antibodies. One research consortium will design
vaccine candidates with molecules that bind to the surface of
dendritic cells, and study the use of chemicals called glycolipids,
which activate immune cells that stimulate dendritic cells.
(Lead investigator: David Ho, Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center)
-- Standardizing and improving laboratory tests: Laboratory tests used to
assess vaccine candidates are often not comparable due to variations
in techniques and materials, severely hampering decisions about which
candidates to pursue for further testing. One grant will establish an
international network of laboratories to standardize procedures for
evaluating neutralizing antibody responses elicited by HIV vaccine
candidates. (Lead investigator: David Montefiori, Duke University,
The Rockefeller University)

In total, the 16 grants support more than 165 investigators in 19
countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Cameroon, Canada, Denmark,
France, Germany, India, Japan, the Netherlands, South Africa, Spain,
Sweden, Switzerland, Uganda, the United Kingdom, the United States,
and Zambia.

Grants Address Key Research Gaps Identified by Global HIV Vaccine
Enterprise; Additional Funding Still Needed

The Gates Foundation grants help address research priorities
identified by the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise, an alliance of
researchers, funders, and advocates from academia, governmental and
non-governmental organizations, and private industry in developing
and developed countries dedicated to implementing a shared scientific
plan to accelerate HIV vaccine development. The Enterprise's
scientific plan prioritizes vaccine discovery and laboratory
standardization as two of the top issues facing the vaccine field.

The foundation grants complement other contributions in support of
the Enterprise scientific plan, including:

-- Switzerland: The Government of Switzerland has pledged to support the
establishment of a vaccine institute in Lausanne that will contribute
to the implementation of the Enterprise scientific plan.
-- Germany: The Fraunhofer Society and the Ministry of Economic Affairs
of Saarland in Germany have committed a total of US$1.7 million to
support the Enterprise scientific plan.
-- U.S.: Last year the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious
Diseases (NIAID) pledged more than US$300 million to support the
Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Immunology (CHAVI), which is addressing
other priorities in the Enterprise plan.

Yet resources for HIV vaccine development still fall significantly
short of need. According to an analysis co-sponsored by the AVAC,
International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, UNAIDS, and other groups, an
estimated US$682 million is spent annually on HIV vaccine
development, while fully implementing the Enterprise scientific plan
would require nearly double this amount - an estimated US$1.2 billion
annually.

"The Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise provides a forum for
researchers and donors to work together on one of the most important
challenges of our time," said Dr. Mark Walport, director of the
Wellcome Trust and a member of the Enterprise Coordinating Committee.
"By clearly identifying funding gaps, the Enterprise is helping
donors ensure that resources are used most effectively."

Other priorities in the Enterprise scientific plan include
developing improved vaccine manufacturing processes, establishing
greater clinical trials capacity in developing countries, improving
regulatory capacity for approving clinical trials and assessing trial
results, and developing intellectual property arrangements that
facilitate global access to new technologies.

"As researchers make progress in designing promising new vaccine
candidates, it is essential that sufficient capacity is in place to
manufacture these vaccines, test them in clinical trials, and conduct
timely reviews of the results," said Dr. Barton Haynes, professor of
medicine at Duke University Medical Center who is principal
investigator of NIAID's CHAVI, and also the lead investigator on one
of the Gates Foundation grants announced today. "The grants funded by
the Gates Foundation will complement the efforts of CHAVI."

About the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: Guided by the belief
that every life has equal value, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
works to reduce inequities and improve lives around the world. In
developing countries, it focuses on improving health, reducing
extreme poverty, and increasing access to technology in public
libraries. In the United States, the foundation seeks to ensure that
all people have access to a great education and to technology in
public libraries. In its local region, it focuses on improving the
lives of low-income families. Based in Seattle, the foundation is led
by Chief Executive Patty Stonesifer and Co-Chairs William H. Gates
Sr., Bill Gates, and Melinda French Gates.

On the Internet: http://www.gatesfoundation.org
http://www.hivvaccineenterprise.org

ots Originaltext: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
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Contact:
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