The Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation on Wednesday announced 16 grants
totaling $287 million to create an international network of
highly collaborative research consortia focused on
accelerating the pace of HIV vaccine development. The
grants will support a range of innovative approaches
for designing an effective HIV vaccine, and will bring
together more than 165 investigators from 19 countries to
tackle some of the biggest scientific challenges
facing the field.
"An HIV vaccine
is our best long-term hope for controlling the global
AIDS epidemic, but it has proven to be a tremendously
difficult scientific challenge," said Jose Esparza,
senior adviser on HIV vaccines for the Gates
Foundation, in a press statement. "We have all been
frustrated by the slow pace of progress in HIV vaccine
development, yet breakthroughs are achievable if we
aggressively pursue scientific leads and work together
in new ways."
The grants will
establish 11 consortia focusing on vaccine discovery,
applying new scientific knowledge and research techniques to
create and evaluate novel vaccine candidates. These
consortia will be linked to five central laboratories
and data analysis facilities, enabling investigators
to openly share data and compare results and allowing the
most promising vaccine approaches to be quickly
prioritized for further development.
"These projects
bring a new level of creativity and intensity to bear
on major scientific challenges facing HIV vaccine
development," Nicholas Hellmann, acting director of
the Gates Foundation's HIV, TB, and Reproductive
Health program, said in a press statement. "Some of the
vaccine concepts that will be pursued have been talked about
for years but have never been adequately studied. If
successful, they could lead to entirely new paradigms
for HIV vaccine development." (The Advocate)