Coordinated Effort On Vaccine Development Will Accelerate Progress

“I, along with eight fellow scientists, have proposed the establishment of a new human-immunology-based clinical-research initiative, the Human Vaccines Project,” Wayne Koff, senior vice president and chief scientific officer of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, writes in a Project Syndicate opinion piece. “In February 2014, leading scientists and public health specialists will gather in La Jolla, California, to craft a scientific plan to identify, prioritize, and, most important, solve the major problems currently hindering development of vaccines against diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria,” he states. “In just the past few years, many candidate vaccines against HIV, dengue, herpes, tuberculosis, and staphylococcus aureus have failed, at a cost of more than $1 billion,” Koff says, adding, “Investing that amount over the next decade in a coordinated effort to address the major questions facing vaccine development would rapidly accelerate our search for effective solutions, implying a transformative impact on individual and public health” (12/3).

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