THE disappointing results of the first large-scale trial of an HIV vaccine came as no surprise to vaccine researchers. “We always knew this was going to happen,” says Dennis Burton who works on HIV vaccines at the Scripps Research Institute in California.
Some news reports last week portrayed the abject failure of Aidsvax to protect most people in the trial against HIV infection as a setback for vaccine development. But most researchers gave up on this type of vaccine over a decade ago to focus on more sophisticated approaches.
Aidsvax consists of the gp120 protein that coats HIV’s surface. Several…
