There is still no money to finalize Russian HIV vaccines
An injection into AIDS
Why scientists are losing the fight against a terrible diseaseYuri Medvedev, Rossiyskaya Gazeta – Federal Issue, 08.06.2012
Andrey Kozlov, Professor at St. Petersburg State University:
Today, about 40 million people live on the planet with this terrible diagnosis. There are more than 550 thousand infected people in Russia. Moreover, most of them do not know that they have HIV.
It is already clear to science that there is only one way to defeat the AIDS pandemic: by creating an effective HIV vaccine. It is here that the research of many laboratories of leading countries is concentrated, hundreds of millions of dollars are allocated per year for this work. Three vaccines have already been created, which have reached the third phase of clinical trials. Moreover, one of them reduced the incidence of HIV by 30 percent.
Someone will say that the result is quite modest. But we must clearly understand that AIDS is very insidious, and its virus is the most complex pathogen among those that humanity has had to face. After all, the virus integrates into the chromosomes of human cells and is thus "masked". And the virus is changeable, affects the cells of the immune system, designed to fight it. Finally, the disease develops slowly, over several years, and if left untreated, it leads to death. All this makes the development of an HIV vaccine a particularly difficult task.
One country cannot cope with it. Scientists from all over the world have joined together in a global consortium. New data on immunology and viral infections have been obtained, allowing us to reconsider many priorities in the fight against the AIDS epidemic.
And what about Russia? In 1997, a domestic program for the development of an HIV vaccine was launched. By the way, it started simultaneously with a similar program in the USA. Our political leaders have repeatedly confirmed at G8 meetings that Russia is ready to participate in the development of an HIV vaccine. Funding was provided by the Ministry of Science. The work was carried out in St. Petersburg (Biomedical Center and State Research Institute of OCHB), in Moscow (Institute of Immunology) and Novosibirsk (Vector). In St. Petersburg, they began to develop a DNA vaccine based on the genes of the domestic HIV isolate subtype A, in Moscow - a recombinant protein, in Novosibirsk – a polyepitope vaccine. The result was a vaccine program that ended with preclinical trials of vaccines on animals.
The work received a new impetus after the meeting of the "eight" leading countries in St. Petersburg in 2006. One billion rubles has been allocated for these studies for the period from 2007 to 2010. Three candidate vaccines were created, which successfully passed the first stage of clinical trials. There is a crucial stage ahead, when, in fact, the effectiveness of vaccines should be established.
But for two years now, the financing of the works, in which the state invested about $ 100 million, has stopped. The situation is more than strange. Previously, the Ministry of Education and Science was responsible for the program, then it was transferred to Rospotrebnadzor, and now it is generally unclear who is responsible for it. No clear response has been received to all our appeals to various ministries and departments, including the letter from the Rector of St. Petersburg University Nikolai Kropachev to the leadership of the Ministry of Health and Social Development. The termination of the vaccine program threatens the national security of Russia in the face of the continuing spread of the HIV epidemic/AIDS.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru08.06.2012