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.


'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.

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