On this International Women’s day 2012
we would like to send out special thanks to all the volunteers in
Mucovac 2
by:
Sarah Joseph posted on 08/03/2012 at 15:00
The trial is going full steam ahead. As of
this week, we are approaching halfway - 13 women have been
recruited into the trial and things are going very well. It seems
as though the rate of recruitment is accelerating which is terrific
news. Without healthy volunteers like you, none of this research
would be possible and we appreciate your commitment very much.
It has been almost a year since I have updated my blog and I
can’t believe how the time has flown by. A lot has been happening
in the world of HIV vaccines. September 2011 saw the annual HIV
vaccine conference in Bangkok which is one of the main events in
the calendar for those working in the field. The location was
particularly relevant because some hotly anticipated results from
the RV144 were the highlight of the meeting. I mentioned the RV144
or “Thai trial” in my previous blog. The vaccine did not work well
enough to be taken further in its present form but the encouraging
results provided new impetus to the field and also, potentially,
clues as to how the vaccine might be having its effect. After
extensive analysis of the samples carried out in a spirit of
unprecedented collaboration, two of the responses made to the
vaccine turned out to be important in determining whether a
volunteer got infected with HIV (see below for more information).
The results are of particular interest to us because we are
currently in the final stages of planning two trials which follow a
similar vaccination strategy to the one used in RV144. The UKHVC003
trial will start later in 2012 in London and the Tamovac 01 trial
is already running in Tanzania and Mozambique. Based on our
previous results, we think that some responses that we will see to
the vaccines in these trials might be better than those seen in
RV144. We will have to wait and see whether the immune responses
which develop after vaccination are similar to those that showed a
relationship to protection from infection in the Thai trial. We
have no way of knowing whether this will be the case until we have
finished the trial.
Read more
Sarah Joseph works in the area of HIV prevention at the
Medical Research Council Clinical Trials Unit
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