Sale of AIDS Vaccine Is Long-Term Hope

If anyone believes a blockbuster cure for HIV is just around the corner, think again.

A study last week showed two vaccines that previously failed in warding off HIV were effective used together in a minority of patients studied in Thailand.

For researchers, it was a breakthrough but it's highly unlikely to result in a commercial product to be sold anytime soon. For one thing, researchers are still trying to understand the study results.

"It was unexpected and quite exciting: That was my first reaction," says Donald Francis, a former executive of VaxGen Inc., the small company that developed one of the vaccines used in the trial. "My next thought, was 'how do we explain it?' At least we have a road map."

A report by Bloomberg News predicts that it may be a decade before researchers understand why the two vaccines helped some patients. Commercialization would come years later.

Developing something as ambitious as a vaccine for AIDS is going to take plenty of government and private-sector cooperation, says Francis, executive director of Global Solutions for Infectious Diseases. The non-profit he founded now owns the rights to VaxGen's Aidsvax.

"The power to develop a vaccine - to bring a product forward - really rests in the private sector," Francis says. "The government responsibility is primarily to spur discovery, and then industry takes it on from there."

Developing vaccines can be a challenging business for public companies, something Francis experienced first hand when Aidsvax failed in a North American trial in 2003.

"Markets tend to follow what the society values and it goes in waves," Francis says. When there's success "everyone says vaccine is a great business. Then you have a failure and everyone says vaccine is a bad business."