The First Shot; An Innovative NIH Center Will Speed New Vaccines to the Public. Its Opening Target: HIV

The experimental HIV vaccine known as VRC-001-VP was injected into a volunteer by a needle-less device on Friday as the opening salvo of vaccine initiatives from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). There are, in fact, more than three dozen other HIV vaccines under study in humans as part of the well-funded, ambitious US effort to create vaccines against some of the deadliest diseases.

The real and symbolic inoculation "signals a whole series of things coming down the pipeline" from NIH, said Barton Haynes, director of the Human Vaccine Institute at Duke University in Durham, N.C. The $34 million Dale and Betty Bumpers Vaccine Research Center (VRC) located on the NIH campus in Bethesda, Md., is the first federal facility devoted exclusively to vaccine research and production. (The center is named for the former US senator from Arkansas and his wife.)

The center is the nexus of collaborations among NIH, other federal agencies and private companies. At VRC scientists will be able to conceive, develop and produce new vaccines rather than negotiate licensing agreements with drug companies. The current VRC-001-VP vaccine was developed in less than a year by the VRC's director, Gary Nabel. According to Nabel, AIDS is the center's first target and "the most challenging epidemic that we have faced in our lifetimes."

HIV is just the beginning of VRC's efforts. The process established to produce HIV vaccines will launch a production line to tackle other diseases, including Ebola virus, malaria and TB, although it will be at least several more years before these products go into clinical trials. "Now, more than ever, we realize that we can contribute not just to personal health, but to public health, whether these are natural outbreaks or man-made, Nable says.

HIV is so difficult to attack because antibodies don't often recognize it and it mutates so easily. "The amount of variation that occurs each year worldwide with influenza is what happens to just one infected person with AIDS," Nable says. "It is mind-boggling how much of a moving target HIV is."

Even the state-of-the-art labs, the $40 million in funding for 2002 and the recruitment of respected researchers can't guarantee progress against disease. The effort also requires a steady supply of volunteers willing to be injected with experimental vaccines. Such people are not easy to find in the Washington area, so the VRC will have to do more community outreach.

The beauty of the VRC, even with the challenges ahead, is its focus. "We don't have to wait for grant cycles, we're not operating on a profit margin or interested in protecting our intellectual property," Nabel says. "We're working toward scientific principles."

This single-mindedness allows the VRC the unprecedented ability to move fast, as the VRC-001-VP shows. "To have taken this vaccine from concept to clinical-grade product in such a short time is an extraordinary accomplishment," says Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which oversees the vaccine center.

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