GeoVax to Study
AIDS Vaccine on Humans

GeoVax Labs, Inc., a biotechnology company that specializes in infectious diseases, is seeking approval from the federal Food and Drug Administration to test an AIDS vaccine on humans starting this fall, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported on Tuesday. The trial of 225 people will be conducted by the National Institutes of Health and supported by the HIV Vaccine Trials Network, the Atlanta-based company announced. The volunteers come from the United States and South America.

GeoVax CEO and President Robert McNally said that the company's goal is to reduce the number of drugs people infected with HIV would need to take control to control the spread and development of AIDS. For a preliminary trial, a pair of monkeys were infected with SIV, or Simian Immunodeficiency Virus, and then given the conventional antiretroviral drug therapy. Conventional therapy for the animals was stopped after six weeks, and the vaccine kept the viral load low.

"There was a 100 times reduction in the viral load on one animal and a thousand times reduction in the second animal," he said in the article. "You give these monkeys the virus, and they start developing the symptoms. Those given our vaccine, it slows down or reduces the viral load of the infection. This is significant because it is suppressing AIDS in monkeys. And that's what we are trying to do in people." (The Advocate)