The Gates Foundation is putting its financial might behind the global fight against HIV/AIDS, donating $287 million US to create an international network of researchers aimed at accelerating the discovery of a vaccine to prevent the disease.
The package of grants - 16 in all spread among more than 165 researchers in 19 countries, including Canada - represents the largest single investment for HIV/AIDS by the philanthropic organization created by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and his wife Melinda.
Dr. Nicholas Hellmann, interim director of HIV, TB and reproductive health programs at the foundation, said that with worldwide HIV infections occurring at a rate of 11,000 a day, a preventive vaccine is the best long-term hope for controlling the AIDS epidemic.
"Unfortunately, developing an effective HIV vaccine has proven to be tremendously difficult, and despite the committed efforts of many researchers around the world, progress simply has not been fast enough," Hellmann told a media teleconference announcing the five-year funding commitment.
"There still remain many unanswered scientific questions, and, in addition, resources haven't always been allocated in the most strategic way, which means there is also a greater need for collaborations amongst investigators."
To that end, the foundation has earmarked about two-thirds of its grants to create 11 large-scale consortia that will pursue innovative ideas for designing an effective HIV vaccine. The five remaining grants will fund central laboratories and other facilities to ensure that research results from one scientific team can be compared in a standardized fashion with those from other teams.
The aim of this collaborative network is to quickly identify the most promising candidate vaccines and pursue their testing and development, Hellmann said. All the researchers accepted grants on the understanding that any successful vaccine would be made available cheaply and quickly to HIV-ravaged developing countries.
Dr. Giuseppe Pantaleo, chief of immunology and allergy at the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois in Lausanne, Switzerland, said scientists from around the world have been working for more than 20 years to develop a vaccine.
"The key problem is that traditional ways of making vaccines - which have worked well against other diseases - have largely failed for HIV," said Pantaleo, who will head a consortium of international researchers focused on improving candidate HIV vaccines based on poxvirus models, which have been shown to stimulate immune responses at the cellular level. (A poxvirus-based vaccine was used to eradicate smallpox.)
Working within Pantaleo's group will be one of Canada's top vaccine specialists, Dr. Rafick-Pierre Sekaly, an immunologist at the University of Montreal.
"It really is a privilege to be part of this consortium and it's recognition of all the work we've been doing for the past several years," Sekaly said Wednesday from Montreal. That work has focused in part on the role of T-cells - the immune cells targeted by the AIDS virus - and how they could be strengthened to fight off infection.
Another Canadian chosen by the Gates Foundation is Dr. Ken Rosenthal, head of molecular medicine at McMaster University, who will be working for two consortia. Part of his work will involve helping to develop standardized tests for measuring specific immune molecules and determining their possible role in stopping HIV infection.
His lab also has been working for several years to develop a vaccine that would stimulate the body's innate immune system located in mucous membranes - including the nose, mouth and respiratory system, the stomach and intestines, and the genital tract.
It is this "mucosa" - specifically the genital mucosa - which acts as the portal for HIV to enter the body, he said Wednesday from Hamilton. "All (trial) AIDS vaccines have been injection vaccines that enter your (blood) and those do not trigger a long-lasting, strong mucosal response. So we have since the very beginning of this epidemic argued that we need a mucosal vaccine for HIV."
Rosenthal said the Gates Foundation funding and creation of research networks means his lab and others in Canada will be brought together with the world's top vaccine researchers to collectively tackle a virus that has infected more than 40 million people worldwide.
"It's extremely energizing and exciting for us. And in fact, it's crucial for us to get our work done."
The collaborative notion represents a radical shift in the world of science, where researchers typically jealously guard their results until publication or presentation to their peers.
Dr. Juliana McElrath, an infectious diseases specialist at Seattle's Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, said the grants will transform the way AIDS vaccine research is done.
"Until now, most HIV vaccine research has been conducted by small groups of investigators that, for the most part, have worked independently," she said, noting that there have been no standardized tools to compare results or mechanisms to share information.
McElrath, who will head one of the 11 consortia, said the approach means her team will work much more closely with international colleagues than might otherwise have been the case.
"It will not be easy to change the way we do business in the HIV vaccine field, but I'm convinced that we have no other choice, because developing an HIV vaccine is no ordinary challenge, and the pace of progress has been too slow."
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