The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, today announced funding to establish the Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Immunology (CHAVI). Barton Haynes, M.D., of Duke University has been selected to lead the CHAVI consortium. The consortium may receive more than $300 million over seven years, $15 million of which is designated for its first year. In its first year, CHAVI will develop an expansion plan that will undergo scrutiny by an external advisory group. CHAVI's mission is to address key immunological roadblocks to HIV vaccine development and to design, develop and test novel HIV vaccine candidates.

"Despite a wide variety of approaches to HIV vaccine development by some of the world's best scientists, we have not yet found a successful vaccine," says Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., director of NIAID. "CHAVI will be a key component of the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise that was proposed in 2003. With this award, we are expanding the enterprise of HIV vaccine development beyond high-quality but separate research projects to a high-quality cooperative and collaborative research system."

Approximately 40 million people are living with HIV/AIDS globally, and the rate of new HIV infections continues to exceed 13,000 per day, according to the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS. Although AIDS drugs have extended the lives of many in wealthy nations, an effective HIV vaccine would be an extremely valuable addition to the comprehensive prevention strategies necessary to halt the spread of HIV in both developing and developed countries.

In addition to Dr. Haynes, the CHAVI senior scientific leaders include Norman Letvin, M.D., of Harvard Medical School, Joseph Sodroski, M.D., of Harvard Medical School, George Shaw, M.D., Ph.D., of the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine, and Andrew McMichael, M.D., of Oxford University, Oxford, UK. These leaders will be responsible for th
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Contact: Linda Joy
ljoy@niaid.nih.gov
301-402-1663
NIH/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
14-Jul-2005

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