New Prime-Boost HIV Vaccine Strategy Shows Promise in
MonkeysDate: March 8, 2001 Source: National Institutes of Health
(NIH) Author: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious
Diseases (NIAID) A team of academic and government researchers
reports today on a promising new "prime-boost" HIV vaccine
approach that is currently on a development fast-track for human
clinical trials. This vaccination strategy kept an HIV-like
virus in check in monkeys, even when the animals were exposed to
very high virus doses months after immunization. The study
appears March 9 in Science Express, an online publication of the
journal Science. Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., director of the
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID),
which funded the research, praises the recent findings. "This
latest study provides some of the best evidence to date that a
preventive HIV vaccine may protect against AIDS. Although the
vaccine did not prevent infection, it continues to keep the
virus at nearly undetectable levels for at