MRC: Enough funds for vaccine

2009-07-20 22:11

Cape Town - A Medical Research Council research initiative is still receiving government funding for clinical trials on two Aids vaccines launched in South Africa on Monday, the project's director said.

Elise Levendal, the director of the South African Aids Vaccine Initiative (SAAVI), said she wanted to set the record straight after reports that the government had cut funding on research on the Aids vaccines.

"We are signing a new agreement with the department of health. They have notified us of further funding of R35m for next three years."

The first clinical trial of Aids vaccines designed and developed in South Africa was launched in Cape Town on Monday.

The trials will be conducted by the SAAVI at Crossroads, Cape Town and Soweto, Johannesburg. Trials are currently being carried out among 12 people at three sites in Boston in the US.

Trial funded with US money

According to a report on Monday, quoting Anna-Lise Williamson, an Aids researcher at the University of Cape Town, the clinical vaccine trial that began on Monday would continue with US money.

Williamson said the department of science and technology (DST) had stopped funding her research this year and that power utility Eskom's contract for funding ended last year and was not renewed.

Levendal confirmed that the DST had not renewed its funding of the project.

"Science and technology had signed an agreement to give us R15m in 2007. In the end only R8m was transferred. So we suffered a lot in that time. The funding was only enough to last to December 2007.

"The DST informed us that it would no longer fund HIV research and development through SAAVI, but through a platform known as Lifelab."

Eskom had also cancelled its funding to SAAVI, after running into financial difficulties in 2007.
As a result the numbers of basic and lab scientists had to be reduced.

Italian govt also helping

SAAVI now had a collaborative agreement with the health department and the Italian foreign affairs department, which had pledged R38m over the next three years.

The trials aim to determine the immune response of HIV-negative people to the vaccines, SAAVI MVA-C (MVA) and SAAVI DNA-C2 (DNA), which were developed by scientists at UCT.

The vaccines were designed to represent HIV subtype C, the virus circulating in South Africa, where more than five million people are infected with HIV.

In the trial, the DNA vaccine, which is constructed out of DNA, will tell the body to make a small amount of some of the proteins found in HIV.

The body's immune system may then recognise these proteins and prepare itself to fight HIV.

- SAPA