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| |  AIDS CONFERENCE: Vaccine-Produced Antibodies Recognise HIV Subtypes ABIDJAN, IVORY COAST -- December 10, 1997 -- Two studies presented here today at The 10th International Conference on AIDS and STDs in Africa have shown that an AIDS vaccine developed by CEL-SCI Corp., has demonstrated protection against HIV infection in animals and causes humans to produce antibodies which recognise the most prevalent subtypes of the virus. Dr. Prem Sarin, CEL-SCI's vice president of research, infectious diseases, explained that test groups of Severe Combined ImmunoDeficient (SCID) mice were injected with white blood cells from human volunteers, some of whom had been vaccinated and boosted with HGP-30. The mice were then injected with a large amount of live AIDS virus. Seventy-eight percent of the SCID mice given the blood from vaccinated individuals were protected from HIV infection. Of the mice receiving the non-vaccinated control blood, only 13 percent showed no evidence of infection, according to Dr. James Talmadge at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, who performed the mouse study. There is substantial variability and continued mutation among the different subtypes of HIV found around the world. Recognizing that a broadly effective vaccine against HIV would have to protect against all of them, researchers specifically injected the mice with an HIV strain different from the one used to develop HGP-30. "These results provide evidence that HGP-30 may have worldwide applicability as an AIDS vaccine," Dr. Sarin said. Blood from human vaccinated volunteers was shown to have antibodies to HGP-30 that recognise HIV subtypes A, B, C and E. Subtype A is mostly found in Africa. The B subtype is the dominant strain in the U.S. and Europe. Subtype C is dominant in Africa and parts of Asia. Subtype E is primarily found in Further, Dr. James Kahn, associate professor of medicine at the University of California-San Francisco, found volunteers who were vaccinated with HGP-30 for the study produced increased levels of a vaccine-specific antibody isotype different from that induced by other developmental AIDS vaccines. Previous research had shown that a loss of this antibody isotype is related to progression from HIV infection to frank AIDS. HGP-30 differs from other vaccine or immunogen candidates because it is a synthetic copy of a conserved part of the p17 core protein of the HIV virus. This part is subject to less variability than other parts of the virus -- parts like the envelope, which is the focus of most other AIDS vaccines under development. According to UNAIDS' latest statistics, infection with HIV is far more common than previously thought. Over 30 million adults and children are now believed to be living with HIV infection. The number is expected to climb to more than 40 million by the year 2000, with the majority of new infections occurring in developing countries.
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