AIDS vaccine is a long way off

“We don't have a protective vaccine available today, and we don't expect to have a protective vaccine available in the foreseeable future,” Dr David Ho, director of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center, told a symposium on HIV-1 vaccines sponsored by the New York Academy of Sciences and the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition.

Dr Ho, a professor at the Rockefeller University in New York, said that the outlook was poor despite the fact that some products in clinical trials showed promise against animal models of HIV. “Coming up with a vaccine against this virus is going to be tough,” Dr Ho said.

There were several difficulties in developing …