By Patricia Kahn, Ph.D.

As thousands of people prepare to gather in Nairobi and New York for September’s AIDS meetings, a key question for vaccine developers is how to contend with the huge diversity of HIV strains circulating worldwide

Macaque studies to optimize vaccine strategies

Balla Musa Silla, founding vice-President for Vaccine Preparedness at the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), and a visionary leader in the fields of population and international development, died on 27 June , 2003 at his home in Ossining, New York. He was 48. The cause of death was T-cell lymphoma.

Updates on Trials, New Candidates and Immune Basis of Protection  

By Emily Bass

At the 24 June meeting of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) AIDS Vaccine Research Working Group, Peggy Johnston, head of the NIH AIDS vaccine research effort, outlined a three-pronged plan for involvement of NIH and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in VaxGen’s completed and ongoing Phase III trials.

AIDS Prevention Research Moves Ahead in Russia

In the southernmost countries of Africa, where the AIDS epidemic is due almost exclusively to clade C HIV strains, the highly politicized issue of clades and vaccines has usually boiled down to decisions on whether to conduct trials only of candidates that closely match strains circulating locally, or to consider studies involving unmatched clades as well.