Canadian to head effort to speed HIV vaccine

Source: The Globe and Mail
ANDRÉ PICARD
PUBLIC HEALTH REPORTER

Canada's top scientist is taking on a new challenge: trying to speed up the development of an AIDS vaccine. Alan Bernstein, the founding president of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, has been appointed the first executive director of the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise. The role of the new body is to get a diverse group of scientists, activists and industry to agree on a common strategy for speeding up research on an AIDS vaccine, an endeavour that has been floundering.

"Part of me was scared by the challenge," Dr. Bernstein said in an interview from Cape Town, South Africa. "But I love a challenge and there's a fantastic need for the world to have an AIDS vaccine."

An estimated 40 million people worldwide are living with HIV-AIDS, and another five million are infected each year. But attempts to create a vaccine against the human immunodeficiency virus have proved fruitless, in large part because it is able to mutate quickly, it can lie dormant for years and it attacks the immune system.

"There's no question HIV is a particularly challenging foe," Dr. Bernstein said. But, at the same time, he said expectations have been unrealistic.

"New pathogens come along and it takes time to understand them. We've never had a vaccine in 20-25 years."

The CIHR, created in 2000, doles out close to $1-billion a year in research funds. The HIV Vaccine Enterprise, by contrast, will have a budget of only $1-million annually to operate its New York-based secretariat. However, it has already mobilized commitments of more than $750-million to support its scientific plan.

The enterprise plans to focus on six key areas: vaccine discovery, laboratory standardization, product development and manufacturing, clinical trials capacity, regulatory issues and intellectual property.

Stephen Lewis, the former United Nations envoy on HIV-AIDS in Africa and now the co-director of AIDS-Free World, said Dr. Bernstein is an "ideal choice to serve as a leader among leaders, co-ordinating the HIV vaccine field and working to build productive partnerships between researchers, donors and advocates."

José Esparza, senior adviser on HIV vaccines for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, said the enterprise "has an important role to play in ensuring HIV vaccine development effort match the magnitude of the pandemic" and said the foundation is committed to supporting the new initiative.