The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has assigned the Chennai-based Tuberculosis Research Centre (TRC) to conduct the clinical trials of another HIV/AIDS vaccine. The new AIDS vaccine, which is based on a slightly different strain, is the second HIV vaccine to be put on trial in the country.

Revealing the new HIV vaccine initiative, Dr Sathyanarayana, director, ICMR, told Pharmabiz that since no vaccine has been proved fully efficacious to control this most dreaded disease in the world so far, different vaccines and methods are being tried world over to find the most effective vaccine.

The first vaccine, already on trial by the Pune-based National Aids Research Institute (NARI), is progressing now. "However, the results are still being analysed and a satisfactory result is yet to be emerged from the trial. But the first dose administration in the healthy volunteers seems to be promising," he said.

As part of the new vaccine trial, the technology of a modified strain has been already transferred to TRC and the trials are expected to be started in a couple of months in Chennai, Dr Sathyanarayana, said.

The efforts are currently going on in many major research institutions and scientific universities to around the world to invent an effective preventive treatment method against HIV/ AIDS under the initiative of International Aids Vaccine Initiative (IAVI). However, no vaccine strains have entered the commercialization stage.

Though there are many pharmaceutical companies in the developed and developing countries working on AIDS vaccine research, none of them has arrived at a stage where they can start commercialization of the same. The IAVI has so far not licensed any of these available technologies to any manufacturers as the studies are still not completed.