HIV Vaccine Reported To Be Successful In Trials By Canadian University.

HIV vaccine reported to be successful in trials by
Canadian university
Researchers at the University of Western Ontario
recently completed Phase 1 human trials of a
new preventative HIV vaccine, and the results
give hope that they may be on track towards a
commercially available vaccine that will protect
against HIV.
The vaccine, called SAV001-H, was developed by
Dr. Chil-Yong Kang and his team at Western
University's Schulich School of Medicine &
Dentistry. So far, SAV001-H is unique in being
the only preventative vaccine to use a
genetically-modified version of the whole virus
(similar to vaccines for polio, influenza and
rabies, to name a few).
"We infect the cells with a genetically modified
HIV-1," Kang said in an interview with Ontario
Business Report. "The infected cells produce lots
of virus, which we collect, purify and inactivate
so that the vaccine won’t cause AIDS in
recipients, but will trigger immune responses."
This will hopefully make the vaccine not only
effective, but easy and cheap to produce.
Now, Phase 1 trials (which started in March of
2012) are specifically to test if the vaccine is
safe, and to identify any side effects (if any). It's
not until Phases 2 and 3 that the actual
effectiveness of the vaccine is truly put to the
test. However, it seems that SAV001-H passed
its Phase 1 trials with flying colours, since no
adverse effects were reported in any of the
patients that participated in the study.
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With this success, it now opens the doors for
Kang and his team to continue on with Phase 2
trials, where they'll test the vaccine's ability to
produce an immune response and its overall
effectiveness.
Dr. Kang goes into details about the vaccine and
the trials in this video: