LAST week, I received mail from IAVI (an international AIDS Vaccine  Institute) from its regional offices in South Africa from a colleague Maaza Seyoum with highlights of the latest annual report. I picked up a few things from the report, especially on the AIDS vaccine that is now the most topical issue at any HIV/AIDS gathering:
An AIDS vaccine can help avert millions of infections, empower women, protect children and circumvent the stigma facing men who have sex with men, and help many others who live beyond the reach of today’s HIV treatment and prevention options.
The ideal AIDS vaccine will give strong and long-lasting protection, in as few doses as possible.
Using a “replicating” virus as a vector to deliver HIV genes can produce multiple copies of an immunogen and help enhance the strength and duration of immune responses. From an original portfolio of seven replicating vectors, IAVI has prioritised the most promising three.
Three monkey studies began in 2014, two with Canine Distemper Virus and one with Vesicular Stomatitis Virus. Early data from the Phase I trial of a Sendai virus candidate did not meet criteria for advancement but continue to inform future work; a second-generation Sendai candidate is scheduled to move into monkey studies in 2015.
Product Development
IAVI shares product development expertise with many other researchers across AIDS vaccine research and development, including awardees of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Collaboration for AIDS Vaccine Discovery (CAVD) grants, to help them translate their promising discoveries into vaccine candidates. Among 10 CAVD projects supported by the Vaccine Product Development Center in 2014, IAVI provided manufacturing, regulatory, clinical and data-management support for a trial testing a replicating-vector-based candidate administered as a pill. The study at the University of Rochester (NY) Medical Center was funded and designed by BIDMC.
HIV mutates faster than most other viruses, escapes the immune system’s  responses and hides, waiting to emerge and strike at any time. A vaccine  will likely need to elicit bNAbs and broadly effective “killer” T cells to help prevent *and* control infection.
IAVI and partners continued to isolate new bNAbs and to design new immunogens and screen them in animals. Two were selected and advanced toward clinical evaluation.
Testing began of two novel T-cell hypotheses. If successful, both candidates will be on a path toward efficacy trials in the next five years.
One focuses on “conserved” portions of HIV that don’t mutate, with IAVI working with Oxford University, the Kenya AIDS Vaccine Initiative-Institute of Clinical Research and the European & Developing Countries Clinical
Trials Partnership to verify in East Africa promising results found in the United Kingdom. “This kind of international collaboration allows us to accelerate approaches toward a vaccine that addresses HIV’s huge
variability so that it can be applied globally,” says Oxford’s Tomáš Hanke,“ and to ensure that capacity and collaborations are in place for large-scale testing as soon as the results warrant it.”
The second approach uses an immunogen that recombines the most frequent sequences from various HIV strains. Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson is advancing such a “mosaic” candidate through a
consortium that includes the NIAID, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC)/Ragon Institute, and the U.S. Military HIV Research Program. IAVI provides scientific, operational, protocol development and regulatory input.
IAVI also collaborated with EuroVacc on a trial in Uganda’s Lake Victoria fishing communities to evaluate how immune responses to an AIDS vaccine may differ in people infected with the schistosomiasis parasite.
Thanks a lot Maaza for this update and before I pen off, let me share this statement from the US Embassy in Zambia sent by a colleague Zarina Geloo on August 12, 2015:
USAID HIV-Prevention Program Commemorates Achievements
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) joined representatives from the National AIDS Council and Zambian Government to commemorate the culmination of the six-year Corridors of Hope III (COH III)
activity. COH III, with funding provided by the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), provided prevention and care services to populations at higher risk of contracting HIV, due to their location along Zambia’s transit routes and border posts.
“A great strength of Corridors of Hope was its grass-roots approach,” said USAID Deputy Mission Director, Patrick Diskin, speaking at the event.
“Working door-to-door and face-to-face, the project strengthened Zambia’s national HIV response by bringing services directly to the beneficiaries.”
COH III was unique in its innovative focus and approach—to target higher risk, mobile populations through clinics, community groups, and door-to-door counseling and testing.
Comprehensive HIV-prevention services were provided through a collaborative effort involving local government, local NGOs, and a public-private partnership, and operated in 10 transit locations: Chililabombwe, Chipata, Chirundu, Katete, Kapiri Mposhi, Kazungula, Livingstone, Sesheke, Solwezi and Nakonde.
Over five and half years, the activity provided nearly 300,000 at-risk people, including female sex workers, their clients, and migrant workers with HIV testing and counseling. Through the activity’s Economic Strengthening component, more than 165 Group Savings and Loan Associations formed within the targeted areas and provided low income women economic resilience by giving them a way to save money.
The US-based Howard University and the Zambian Government forged a public-private partnership that developed a new  strategy that directed patients on ART to four private pharmacies in Livingstone, significantly reducing the patient load of the hospital’s ART clinic.
COH III was a $28 million project implemented by FHI 360 and funded through USAID and PEPFAR. FHI 360 partnered locally with Afya Mzuri, the Zambia  Health Education and Communications Trust (ZHECT), and the Zambia Interfaith Networking Group (ZINGO), and internationally with Howard University. Corridors of Hope III began in October 2009 and ends September 10, 2015.
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