Vaccines for HIV

A preventive vaccine for HIV is urgently needed to curb the AIDS pandemic. Research and development of HIV vaccines is accelerating and there is incre asing evidence that a viable market will be identified. The basic approache s to HIV vaccine design (HIV protein vaccines, live vector, DNA vaccines an d live attenuated vaccines) are all undergoing rapid improvements to their design and delivery techniques; patents since 1997 in this field are review ed. Many of the techniques bring pioneered for HIV vaccines will be applica ble to vaccines for other pathogens. Although some candidate HIV vaccine ap proaches have demonstrated at least partial efficacy in animal models and h ave been shown to be safe and immunogenic in early human trials, no human e fficacy trials of HIV vaccines have been completed. The final utility of th e many clever techniques now available to produce novel HIV vaccines remain s unknown.