GLAXOSMITHKLINE announced plans to develop an experimental Aids vaccine from a virus that leaves chimpanzees with a cold yesterday.

The research will form the basis of a new partnership with the International Aids Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), an international charity backed by Bill Gates and Sir Elton John.

Under the deal, the first alliance between a public body and a major pharmaceutical company in the hunt for a cure for HIV/Aids, AIVI will provide funding and expertise. GSK has committed to making any successful vaccine available to developing countries at affordable prices.

The joint venture will focus on a new delivery mechanism that will use a genetically modified version of a common chimpanzee virus known as an adenovirus. Scientists believe that a non-infectious strain of the virus can transport HIV proteins into the body, where they might trigger the immune system into action.

Other drug makers are working on similar delivery methods using human viruses but the body often kills the virus before it can deliver its HIV proteins. Because humans have no natural immune response to chimpanzee diseases, scientists believe they might be more effective as a delivery system.

GSK and AIVI will establish a joint research and development team that will take a non-infectious chimp-based vaccine to initial tests on human volunteers. The research programme is expected to take about three years.

Gerald Voss, director of HIV at GSK Biologics, the drug maker’s specialist vaccine arm, said that the science, which was pioneered in late 2003, was still in the very early stages of development. He added that the company was also looking at other technologies including a medicine provisionally called GP120/Neftab, which is about to start late-stage tests.

Several drug makers are trying to develop an HIV vaccine, including Merck and Chiron of the US and France’s Sanofi-Aventis. It is estimated that more than 30 treatments are now in various stages of development throughout the world.

The collaboration comes ahead of the G8 summit in Scotland next month, where world leaders are expected to make fresh commitments to encourage the development of vaccines to cure HIV/Aids, malaria and tuberculosis

EPIDEMIC

• The World Health Organisation says that more than 26 million people in sub-Saharan Africa were infected with HIV/Aids by the end of last year
  
• Up to 95 per cent of all new cases, now running at about five million a year, are reported in Africa

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