A promising HIV vaccine has recently been found successful as it passes its initial trial stage on 33 HIV positive patients. As it has been considered a success, it is now set to be tested on 600 more people. However, experts have highly emphasized that they are to conduct these tests on people who do not suffer from the said disease so that they would be able to find out its ability to prevent infection.
The HIV Vaccine Trial: What Are The Results?
According to reports by RT News, it was found that the findings from the first set of tests with regards to the vaccine, known as SAV001is a 'killed whole-HIV-1 vaccine', which means that it contains the virus itself, but modified and already harmless for the human body. Experts say that the development of this vaccine aspires to produce an anti-HIV antibody in uninfected patients so as to prevent such cases from spreading at worse levels. The study has been published in the journal Retrovirology.
Furthermore, in one of his statements reported by Mirage News, study lead researcher Dr. Chil-Yong Kang, from the University of Western Ontario (UWO), has revealed that they too, are excited for the Phase I results as it could potentially pave the way for further advanced studies about the disease. Moreover, the University had also claimed that SAV001 has become the first vaccine of its type allowed to conduct this stage of human clinical trials by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
On the other hand, Dr. Kang has also revealed that the vaccine can cover "not only single sub-types of HIV," but many different strains of the virus. It was found that during the first stages of the trials on 33 HIV- positive volunteers, the findings have shown that SAV001 is safe for use and has a long lasting effecte specially in triggering an anti-HIV immune response in HIV-positive patients.Experts have also highly emphasized that if all goes according to plan, and if the coming trials are passed successfully, the vaccine will go through the final testing stage on 6,000 volunteers.
