After decades of failures, researchers have renewed hopes for an effective HIV vaccine
Despite 20 years of failures in major HIV vaccine trials, researchers say recent advances have likely, hopefully, put them on the right track to develop a highly effective vaccine.
The world needs an HIV vaccine if it ever hopes to beat a virus that still infects over 1 million people a year and contributes to hundreds of thousands of deaths.
Despite 20 years of failures in major HIV vaccine trials — four this decade alone — researchers say recent scientific advances have likely, hopefully, put them on the right track to develop a highly effective vaccine against the insidious virus.
But probably not until the 2030s.
“An effective vaccine is really the only way to provide long-term immunity against HIV, and that’s what we need,” Dr. Julie McElrath, the director of the vaccine and infectious disease division at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, said Monday at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Denver.
All current HIV vaccine action is in the laboratory, animal studies or very early human trials.
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