Twenty years on – scientists still struggle to find a cure

Date: 02/12/04

By Véronique Vallières

More than 20 years after European scientists discovered HIV, researchers are still struggling to find a cure to one of the world's deadliest diseases.

Since 1995, the emergence of therapies combining three anti-retroviral drugs (ARV) has seen HIV-related mortality rates in Europe drop. The discovery of these new drugs has seen the balance in research shift, as commercial drug companies have devoted most of their resources to developing effective therapies rather than preventive vaccinations. AIDS vaccination research has become largely government funded.

As part of its sixth framework programme (FP6) on research for 2002-06, the European Commission has allocated E400 million to fight against the three major diseases linked to poverty - AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. The EU's strategy to encourage pan-European and international research efforts is twofold: provide grants to fund AIDS-related research projects and support clinical trials in Africa.

An official in the Commission's research department, said that the EU's budget to fight the disease was growing and that AIDS was “becoming a more pressing priority for the European Union”.

The official said: “Because the Commission believes in the 'blending together' of knowledge, we [DG Research] provide funds for multi-partnership projects in three core areas: vaccines, microbicides and ARVs. Our approach is global, but focuses primarily on sub-Saharan Africa. We're also concerned with eastern and central Europe, especially since the last enlargement round.”

One of the most ambitious EU projects is EuroSIDA, a study launched in 1994 whose main objective is to assess the impact of drugs on HIV-infected patients living in Europe. The EuroSIDA network encompasses 63 hospitals across 26 European countries, where the effects of combined ARVs on more than 10,000 patients are supervised.

Biological samples taken from patients during this study build up unique research data for understanding the origins of possible side-effects of combined treatments. Pharmaceutical groups producing ARVs are very interested in these results and have recently agreed to finance the network.

In France, the Pasteur Institute in Paris is working closely with the National Agency for AIDS Research on a dozen areas covering most priority fields in AIDS research today, such as the origin, evolution, transmission and variability of the viral infection.

Bruno Baron, spokesman for the Pasteur Institute, said: “A big part of our research is vaccine-oriented, but vaccination research is very difficult, notably because of the extreme variability of [the composition of] HIV. It will take time to get a comprehensive schema of the disease. One cannot hope for a vaccine before several years.”

The institute is developing an anti-AIDS vaccine that is combined with vaccines against other common diseases, such as measles. This attenuated virus vaccine, which would provide lifelong protection, seems the most likely to be successful, because “the immunity response is greater when combined”, said Baron. “These vaccines are also much more affordable and are much easier to distribute on a large scale, notably in developing countries.”

One disadvantage remains: such a vaccine could only be administered to children, as most adults have already been vaccinated against measles or smallpox.

While some EU member states are very proactive in terms of research, other countries have seen medical research on AIDS decline significantly over the last decade.

Annabel Kanabus, director of the UK-based international AIDS charity Avert, deplores the situation in the UK. “There is not much medical research going on in the UK, primarily because we thought there was a greater need to spend time and money on how existing treatments are being used and distributed to people who need them rather than on developing new drugs. Now that we have some usable drugs, we are less inclined to invest in new research it's a shame”.

Pascale Perrin, spokesman at DG Research, said that the discovery of therapeutic drugs should be no reason to diminish efforts in finding a long-term cure. “The treatments allow us to take a short break, but we have to work as hard as we used to, if not more, to find a cure. Now that patients can 'hang in there' thanks to the treatments, it allows us to deepen research in discovering more long-term treatments solutions. It is out of the question to give up now.”

Article says that more than 20 years after European scientists discovered HIV, researchers were still struggling to find a cure to one of the world's deadliest diseases. Since 1995, the emergence of therapies combining three anti-retroviral drugs (ARV) has seen HIV-related mortality rates in Europe drop. The discovery of these new drugs has seen the balance in research shift, as commercial drug companies have devoted most of their resources to developing effective therapies rather than preventive vaccinations. AIDS vaccination research has become largely government funded while the EU has allocated €400 million under its Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) to fight against the three major diseases linked to poverty - AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. The EU's strategy to encourage pan-European and international research efforts is twofold: provide grants to fund AIDS-related research projects and support clinical trials in Africa.