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In a phase one clinical trial that began on Monday, researchers at the University of Oxford in the UK gave the first doses of a potential HIV vaccine to volunteers.
According to the university, the experiment will assess the safety, tolerability and immunogenicity of the HIVconsvX vaccine.
The HIV-CORE 0052 study, which is part of the European AIDS Vaccine Initiative, will recruit 13 HIV negative people aged 18 to 65 who are not considered to be at high risk of infection.
The vaccine is called ‘mosaic’, which means that it can target a wide range of strains of HIV-1 and could be used anywhere in the world.
Unlike previous HIV vaccine candidates which aim to produce antibodies from B cells, HIVconsvX aims to activate T cells of the immune system and direct them to the most conserved and vulnerable areas of HIV.
“An effective HIV vaccine has been elusive for 40 years. This trial is the first in a series of evaluations of this new vaccine strategy in people who are HIV-negative for prevention and in people living with HIV for cure ”, Tomas Hanke, trial manager, principal investigator and professor of vaccine immunology at the Jenner Institute at the University of Oxford, said in a statement.
If left untreated, HIV damages the body’s immune system and can develop into life-threatening AIDS.
The UN announced in 2014 that by 2020 the number of people newly infected with the virus would be reduced to 500,000. However, nearly 1.5 million more cases were reported last year.
AIDS was first clinically reported on June 5, 1981, with five cases in the United States.
(With contributions from agencies)
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