About
Currently, there is no vaccine to prevent or treat HIV/AIDS.
Some vaccines are in development, but these vaccine candidates are mainly directed against HIV strains that circulate in the developed world.
Additionally, these vaccine candidates use technologies that will be prohibitively expensive for use in developing nations. Furthermore, the vaccines that are being developed are mainly being developed by for-profit companies, who will need to recoup research and development costs by charging large sums of money for the vaccine. Many people will not be able to afford such a vaccine – these people are the fathers, mothers and children living in developing nations where the HIV/AIDS epidemic is hitting the hardest.
GAIA VF supports the development of a globally relevant, globally accessible HIV vaccine by building infrastructure and fostering collaborations at the site of future vaccine trials: Providence, Rhode Island and Bamako, Mali.
GAIA VF collaborates with the Brown University TB/HIV Research Laboratory, University of Bamako, University of Pennsylvania, Miriam Hospital and EpiVax, Inc on the development a globally relevant HIV vaccine that will be distributed on a not-for-profit basis throughout the developing world.
How We Are Developing the GAIA HIV Vaccine
HIV mutates rapidly. Currently, there are over 100,000 HIV sequences existing in databases, reflecting the more than 20 different HIV strains, or clades, that have been identified thus far. Focusing on any one strain of HIV excludes the rest if the HIV-infected population from protection.
Why?
Response to any vaccine – even polio or flu – is dependent upon recognition of epitopes contained within those vaccines by the hosts’ immune system. Epitopes are much like words of a language with many dialects. The words which are conserved and understood across the dialects are universally recognized as part of that language. Hence, discovering the epitopes or HIV “words” which are common to all the “dialects” of HIV in the world is the key to a globally relevant, globally accessible HIV Vaccine.
GAIA VF’s Approach
Our approach to developing a globally relevant, globally accessible HIV vaccine has been to apply computer tools – called “informatics” or immunoinformatics tools to select highly conserved regions (epitopes) of HIV. These epitopes are confirmed in vitro and a vaccine is then constructed from these epitopes by cloning their coding sequences into a vector. The final GAIA vaccine will likely be a combination of two inexpensive technologies: a DNA vaccine and a live vector (such as a bacteria or virus that does not cause disease.)