Professor Phil Berman
UC Santa Cruz Professor Phil Berman has been trying to develop a vaccine for HIV for the past 30 years. He believes that he and his team have developed
clinical trial-worthy vaccine candidates.
The key to his new model, said Berman, is new sugar molecules on the vaccine’s surface. Some of the most potent antibodies are ones that bind to these sugars, which previous models were missing, he said.
“It’s a huge technical challenge to be able to make small fragments that fold up in the right way and incorporate the right kind of carbohydrates, or sugar molecules, in a way that can be manufactured on a large scale,” Berman said.
Berman's vaccine is based on an early model that was the first to have a clinical trial, in Thailand and North America—
RV144. While ultimately that vaccine did not come close to the efficacy rate needed to be classed as a vaccine (60 percent), it did show promise and opened the door to
actual clinical trials.
“At the time, people thought it was impossible to do HIV vaccine trials,” he said.
Most thought patients would be too difficult to recruit and retain, immunizations too numerous and ethical, informed consent too challenging.
There is video below the fold, and you can read more
here about the scientific details of what Berman and others feel they have tangibly learned that will improve these new vaccine candidates.