An Investigational Vaccine Successfully Suppressed SHIV

An investigational vaccine against simian-human immunodeficiency virus (SHIV) successfully suppressed simian-human immunodeficiency virus (SHIV) during the third phase of the clinical trial. The results of the study have been reported by the scientists from the Duke University Medical Center in the Nature magazine.

The principal idea was to enforce three-targets anti-SHIV vaccine with another two, so that the resulted 'pentavalent' vaccine to become protective against SHIV. The investigators hope this method could potentially help in development of an anti-HIV vaccine.

"The vaccine regimen tested in the Thai trial, known as RV144, had 31-percent efficacy and is the only HIV investigational vaccine regimen to have demonstrated even modest protection from HIV infection. "In this study in monkeys, we increased that level of protection to 55 percent by using a pentavalent (five-part) vaccine." - said the director of the Duke Human Vaccine Institute and senior author of a study Barton F. Haynes, M.D.