On Tuesday in St. Petersburg, the president of the Russian Society of Biotechnologists said an AIDS vaccine developed by Russian scientists will be tested in volunteer groups at risk of contracting HIV. "Curbing the epidemic of HIV/AIDS in Russia and the whole world does not [seem] possible without an effective vaccine," said Anatoly Vorobyov, who is attending the 14th international AIDS, Cancer and Public Health Conference in St. Petersburg.

The "process of creating a vaccine against HIV has proved slow and sometimes discouraging; nevertheless, determination of the world biomedical community to resolve this problem is growing," Vorobyov said. "Even though there is no final variant of resolving this problem as yet, encouraging results sometimes appear."

A vaccine developed at Moscow's Institute of Immunology uses molecular antigens, Vorobyov said. At the Mechnikov Medical Academy, research is being conducted to obtain a recombinant vaccine made of inactivated HIV or components of the virus. A DNA-based vaccine is the goal of work underway at St. Petersburg's Biomedical Center.

Representatives of leading medical centers and universities from Russia, other nations in the Commonwealth of Independent States, the Baltic republics, Germany, France, and the United States are taking part in the conference.

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