19 May 2017
The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) has awarded a new $3.99 million grant to Dr. Gary Kobinger of Université Laval to work on a vaccine to prevent HIV infection.
The three-year grant supports a scientific collaboration between Dr. Kobinger and the Design and Development Lab, a state-of-the-art research facility in Brooklyn, New York, operated by the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI). Under the leadership of Dr. Kobinger and Dr. Chris Parks of IAVI, the respective research teams in Canada and the United States are working to improve a promising HIV vaccine designed by Dr. Parks, with the goal of bringing it to clinical trials in human volunteers.
“We are encouraged by this endorsement of Dr. Gary Kobinger’s work and the prospects of his collaboration with IAVI’s Design and Discovery Lab,” said Mark Feinberg, IAVI’s chief executive officer. “The innovative work of Kobinger’s lab is a prime example of creative and intelligent research that contributes to the global response to emerging infectious diseases, and illustrates how scientific advances in one field can benefit another. In this case, understanding how to create an effective Ebola vaccine is being transferred to the search for an AIDS vaccine.”
Using a modified animal virus, called vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV), which does not cause disease in humans, IAVI’s experimental vaccine carries copies of a protein taken from the surface of HIV. Once inside the body, the protein stimulates protective immune defenses against HIV infection. Animal studies have shown encouraging results so far.
Dr. Kobinger’s team will further modify the IAVI vaccine to increase its potential efficacy and move it into clinical trials. Dr. Kobinger is an expert on the Ebola virus and helped develop the Ebola vaccine (rVSV-ZEBOV), which has been shown to be the most effective in preventing Ebola infection and is also based on the VSV architecture.