The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has announced plans to initiate a Phase I clinical trial to test a combination of two AIDS vaccine candidates, ADVAX and TBC-M4, in a prime-boost regimen (See Box on Page 2: The Vaccine Candidates). The trial will be conducted at two ICMR institutions, the National AIDS Research Institute (NARI) in Pune, Maharashtra, and the Tuberculosis Research Centre (TRC) in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. YRG CARE, Chennai, will collaborate with TRC for advocacy and community mobilisation for the trial. The trial will be conducted under the aegis of a Memorandum of Understanding between the Government of India – through the ICMR and the National AIDS Control Organisation – and IAVI. |
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'Prime-boost' is a way of combining two different vaccine
candidates with the hope of getting a better response from
the body's immune system than giving either vaccine candidate
alone. ADVAX, a plasmid DNA AIDS vaccine candidate,
will be used for priming the immune response. TBC-M4, an
AIDS vaccine candidate based on a vector built from recombinant
Modified Vaccinia Ankara (MVA), will be used to boost
the initial immune response generated by ADVAX.
The decision to conduct the prime boost trial follows
promising results of a Phase I trial of TBC-M4 conducted at
TRC in collaboration with YRG Care. In that study, the vaccine
candidate was found to be safe and well tolerated.
