AIDS Vaccine to Get Large-Scale Trial
From Reuters
SAN FRANCISCO —
A small California biotechnology company has engineered the first AIDS vaccine to win federal approval for a large-scale trial in humans, the San Jose Mercury News reported Saturday.
The study, which will begin this year, will involve 7,500 healthy volunteers, cost $20 million and take three years. If successful, the vaccine would be made available to the public in the early part of the next century, the paper said.
AIDS researchers and activists said the development of the vaccine, produced by VaxGen Inc., is a milestone in the fight against the virus that has killed 11.7 million people worldwide.
