Canadian scientists reach 'milestone' in HIV/Aids vaccine development

Scientists working at the University of Western Ontario have announced that they have reached a "certain milestone" in their work developing an HIV/Aids vaccine.

Over the past 20 years, researchers at the university's Schulich School of Medicine have targeted their efforts on creating a vaccine made from whole HIV viruses that have been subjected to high levels of gamma rays in order to make them safe.

Given that variants of such a method have been used to create effective vaccines for the likes of polio, rabies and some strands of influenza, the Canadian team believes that their genetically-altered full viruses could succeed where other potential vaccines, which have tended to use fragments of HIV/Aids, have so far failed.

As such, lead researcher Dr Chil-Yong Kang has confirmed that the team has now submitted an application to the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to go ahead with human trials of their vaccine.

Should the agency give them the green light, it is anticipated that it will be first tested on a small number of volunteers who have HIV though are yet to show any symptoms of Aids.

It is estimated that around 0.6 per cent of the global population is infected with HIV, with one in three Aids-related deaths occurring in sub-Saharan Africa.

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