New Vaccine May Lead to Ground-breaking HIV Treatment

KANSAS CITY, Kan.- A University of Kansas School of Medicine researcher recently developed a DNA vaccine that is intended to take the place of expensive antiretroviral therapy for HIV patients. Bill Narayan, DVM, PhD, the principal investigator of a decades-long research project on studying HIV-like viruses, was awarded a $3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to test the HIV vaccine on monkeys.

If these trials go well, he could receive more money to start clinical trials. Dr. Narayan has applied for an additional grant for vaccine development that could bring almost $15 million to the School of Medicine as well as the Kansas City area.

Thomas Noffsinger, Ph.D, Vice Chancellor of Research Administration, said about 42 jobs are supported with every $1 million in federal grant funds. "If the research and clinical trials go well and we do develop a vaccine, the economic impact will be enormous," Noffsinger said. "The health care system for the disease will be turned upside down. However, the world will be a better place by far."

Dr. Narayan uses a monkey model of HIV that he developed to study the effects of AIDS and vaccines. This model closely mimics HIV infection in humans.

Currently, Dr. Narayan has a DNA vaccine that prevents AIDS in monkeys. This research will be applied to patients who are already infected with HIV and who are enrolled in antiretroviral therapy. A DNA vaccine has several advantages: less expense, fewer side effects and booster immunizations every few months instead of the frequent daily intake of antiretroviral drugs. Antiretroviral therapy is costly; it is frequently toxic and is inconvenient to use.

"A DNA vaccine is great because DNA is indestructible so the vaccine itself won't need special care, like refrigeration," Dr. Narayan said. "Also, DNA cannot cause a disease, so there would be no risk of contracting HIV for patients using this therapeutic immunization."

Dr. Narayan wants to find the appropriate interval at which a vaccine could be administered to stop reproduction of HIV. He's also investigating if one DNA vaccine developed for the American strain of HIV could be used to stop reproduction of other strains of the virus that are circulating in other parts of the world. The virus changes from region to region, globally.

The DNA vaccine takes the blueprint of HIV and cuts out the genes that cause the virus to infect a host. The virus still thinks that it is replicating even though it's not. Dr. Narayan points out that the development of a DNA vaccine for HIV will not be the end to world's AIDS suffering. "We can dampen HIV," Dr. Narayan said, "but we can't get rid of it." He said that it would be several decades before the notion of HIV/AIDS eradication can be envisioned.

Dr. Narayan was awarded the grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health. The Institute awarded the medical school almost $600,000 this fiscal year. More than $3 million will be awarded during the next five years.

A recently published UNAIDS report shows that 5 million people became newly infected with HIV last year, more than any other year since the beginning of the AIDS/HIV epidemic. According to News-Medical.Net, the rate of infection is moving faster than global action against the disease.

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