Scientists get step closer to HIV vaccine
BEIJING. April 4. KAZINFORM Chinese scientists have succeeded in the first phase of a clinical trial of an HIV vaccine and will launch the second stage in a few months, according to the country's leading disease control expert; Kazinform refers to China Daily.
Shao Yiming, chief expert of the National Center for AIDS/STD Control and Prevention, told China Daily that the second phase of experiments on the vaccine, which has been approved by the national drug administration, "is likely to start in three or four months".
Work on the HIV vaccine was one of the 16 major science and technology projects that made significant progress during the nation's 11th Five-Year Plan (2006-2010).
Generally, a vaccine to cure an infectious disease needs to pass three phases of clinical trials, to evaluate its effect on healthy people, to test its effectiveness on people exposed to a risk of infection, and to evaluate its impact on high-risk groups.
Although a number of countries have completed second-phase tests, none has yet reached stage three.
China started research on an HIV vaccine in 1993 by conducting clinical trials with a vaccine produced outside the country.
In 2005, Chinese scientists developed a new vaccine using the smallpox vaccine as a carrier.
Smallpox was a deadly infectious disease that had been globally eradicated by the late 1970s; Kazinform cites China Daily.
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