NIAID Begins Enrolling Volunteers for Novel HIV Vaccine Study

A large clinical trial of a novel HIV vaccine has begun enrolling volunteers at sites in North America, South America, the Caribbean and Australia, with organizers seeking 1,500 participants.

The trial is co-funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of NIH, and the pharmaceutical company Merck & Co. Merck developed the experimental vaccine to stimulate HIV-specific cellular immunity, which prompts the body to produce T cells that kill HIV-infected cells. In previous smaller trials, this vaccine was found to be safe and to induce cellular immune responses against HIV in more than half of the volunteers.

The study will be conducted jointly by NIAID's multicenter HIV Vaccine Trials Network (HVTN) and by Merck.

The organizers are seeking healthy, HIV-negative men and women volunteers between the ages of 18 and 45 who are at an increased risk of acquiring HIV. The researchers plan to enroll a significant number of volunteers from populations particularly hard-hit by AIDS, including African Americans and other ethnic minorities.

Organizers expect that it will take approximately one year to fully enroll volunteers into the study. NIAID and Merck expect the trial be completed in four-and-a-half years, with results anticipated in 2010. For more information on enrolling, visit HVTN's website at www.hvtn.org (http://www.hvtn.org).