In a major setback to India’s fight against HIV/AIDS, the director-general of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), V.M. Katoch, has admitted that the ongoing trials for the AIDS vaccine had to be suspended after the international company involved in the process-vanished. However, the good news is that India has started working on an indigenous AIDS vaccine and the animal trials will be starting soon.
According to Dr Katoch, another reason for the suspension of the trials was that the initial trials ended in failure as it did not “elicit” the acceptable immune response. “The company vanished from India and the trials could not be carried forward. The initial trials were good enough to declare that it was not good from public health prospective as it was not found to be stable,” he told this newspaper.
The National AIDS Research Institute (NARI), Pune, has re-activated the indegeneous effort of a senior scientist of All-India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and propose to start Phase-I trials soon.
“From the earlier experience we gathered that vaccine is a possibility and we thought that should not stop the venture. We have planned to take forward the efforts of a senior virologist of AIIMS who has designed it. We will soon go for animal trials,” Dr Katoch added.
The trials, Dr Katoch said, will be followed by evaluation of toxicity and immunology parametres. “If the results are found to be promising and stable, we will carry forward the process.