Gates puts millions into AIDS vaccine research

[Angel]

The world's largest philanthropic organization is scaling up its battle against the world's deadliest epidemic with an infusion of cash to speed development of AIDS vaccines.

But the $287 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation also comes with the requirement that researchers share data and collaborate in a way that's rare in science. Vaccine candidates that don't pass muster will be quickly abandoned. Those that show promise will get fast-track treatment.

The goal is to pool some of the world's brightest minds to break through the daunting technical obstacles that have stymied two decades of work on a vaccine against HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

"Despite the committed efforts of many researchers around the world, progress has simply not been fast enough," said Dr. Nicholas Hellmann, interim director of HIV programs for the Seattle-based foundation.

More than 25 million people have died from AIDS and about 40 million are infected with the virus. With 11,000 new infections occurring every day, a vaccine is the best long-term hope for controlling the epidemic, Hellmann said.

Of the 50-some possible HIV vaccines that have been tested in humans, only two have progressed to large-scale trials. One didn't work. Trials on the second started last year, coordinated through Seattle's Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

"HIV is an incredibly flexible and changeable virus," Hellmann said. "We have to be smarter and more efficient."

Seattle scientists benefit

The grants are the foundation's biggest investment in HIV-vaccine work. They come just weeks after Warren Buffett said he will donate $31 billion to the foundation over the next several years and Bill Gates announced he will soon step down from Microsoft to devote more energy to philanthropy.

The mix of projects announced Wednesday shows a definite hometown bias. Four of sixteen will be run by Seattle scientists and organizations, including the Hutchinson Center, which received the largest research grant: $30.1 million to boost the potency of HIV vaccines by adding chemicals that stimulate the body's most basic immune responses.

"That's because Seattle is good," said Dr. Juliana McElrath, chief of infectious-disease programs for the Hutchinson Center. "There's a lot of diverse expertise here."

In total, 165 scientists from 19 countries will be involved in the five-year program.

Traditionally, most vaccine studies are conducted in individual labs, or among small groups of colleagues, McElrath said. Data are often kept secret until publication, to gain advantage over competitors.

Groups use different yardsticks to measure results, making it difficult to compare the effectiveness of different vaccines.

The Gates recipients — including some drug companies — all agreed to share information promptly with everyone else in the program and the wider science community. Individuals can patent breakthroughs, but each signed a contract pledging that any vaccines developed through the collaboration will be sold cheaply in Africa and other developing regions, where the epidemic is most intense. The scientists also have specific deadlines and milestones to meet.

"It's a different mentality for a lot of us," said Leo Stamatatos of the Seattle Biomedical Research Institute. "It's a more industrial approach. They're saying: We want a vaccine at the end of the five years. We're not here to fund you forever."

Stamatatos received $19.4 million to work with other scientists using state-of-the-art computer techniques to design synthetic proteins that may stimulate a more powerful immune response.

It's the type of high-risk project that federal funding agencies shy away from, Stamatatos said. The Gates Foundation's deep pockets will allow the group to test hundreds of proteins, looking for the few that will be most effective.

A hard virus to fight

An HIV vaccine has been elusive because not only does the virus attack the body's immune system, it also changes so rapidly that an infected person can have many different forms. That's one of the reasons the traditional approach of injecting viral fragments to induce neutralizing antibodies hasn't worked well.

Much of the recent work on HIV vaccines has focused on a second aspect of the immune system: stimulation of killer T cells that attack and destroy infected cells.

Many experts believe a successful vaccine will employ both techniques, and the Gates Foundation is splitting its money between them.

The Gates commitment averages about $57 million a year, which represents only 10 percent of the public and private money spent on HIV-vaccine research in the United States.

But because the foundation's work is so focused, it may be able to leverage its investment to yield big results, said Dr. Harriet Robinson of Emory University's Vaccine Center in Atlanta, who is a leading AIDS vaccine researcher.

"They have a chance to achieve a lot," said Robinson, who does not receive any Gates money.

To ensure researchers can compare apples to apples, the foundation also is creating five centralized laboratories to develop common methods for analyzing results.

University of Washington immunologist Phil Greenberg received $10 million to engineer strains of mice with human genes that will provide a standard model for early tests to determine whether and where in the body a vaccine candidate induces immunity. A central data repository will be established at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.

But don't expect a vaccine soon, Hellmann cautioned. He estimates it could be 10 years before anything reaches the market.

Worldwide spending on AIDS vaccines totals about $682 million a year, said Mitchell Warren of the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition. While the Gates money is a significant boost, the group estimates it will take about $1 billion a year to achieve a marketable vaccine.