Search For HIV Vaccine Continues After NIAID Pulls Trial

Washington (dbTechno) - The search for an HIV vaccine continues after the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) decided last week to pull the plug on a U.S. human trial to test an HIV vaccine.

The human trial set to take place was called PAVE 100, and was aimed to test out the effectiveness of an HIV vaccine which had great promise.

It was deemed though that more research needed to be done on the vaccine before it can be tested on humans.

The trial was set to kick off in October 2007, but that all changed following a decision by Merck & Co. to pull the plug on a trial of their own HIV vaccine.

The PAVE 100 trial was designed to have 8,500 volunteers in the U.S., South America, Caribbean, Eastern, and Southern Africa.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) later decided for a more small-scale trial.

The decision to pull the trial of the vaccine, according to the NIAID, came after they talked with those in the scientific and HIV advocacy communities.