Foreign pharmaceutical and research institutes may work in
conjunction with domestic institutes on research of AIDS vaccine,
said Zhang Xiulan, consultant from the Division of Biological
Products of the Department of Drug Registration of the State Drug
Administration (SDA).
If, and when, they make a breakthrough, the domestic party, acting
on behalf of both sides, is eligible to apply for the necessary
official sanction to jointly conduct human trials.
Foreign research institutes are banned from conducting AIDS vaccine
drugs trials on people in China, said Zhang, whose department is
the only authority in China eligible to give approval for such
tests.
Without the approval of SDA, any such testing in China is illegal,
said Zhang, whose words unequivocally put paid to various rumours
that both domestic and overseas AIDS vaccines were currently being
tested in the world's most populous country.
The number of HIV cases in China had reached more than 1 million by
the end of 2002, a figure which is increasing at an annual rate of
more than 30 percent, according to estimates by the Ministry of
Health.
There are about 100,000 people suffering from AIDS, the majority of
whom live in poverty and cannot afford the high price of HIV/AIDS
medicines.
Researchers from the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and
Prevention, together with other institutes, have been organized by
the Ministry of Health to establish a special taskforce to
strengthen AIDS vaccine research, said Hao Yang.
Hao, a division director from the Disease Control Department of the
Ministry of Health, said at present Chinese research into finding
an AIDS vaccine is still at "the laboratory stage," which means it
is still far off the human experimental stage.
In
recent years, there has been various news about AIDS vaccine
testing being carried out both overseas and in China, but none has
been shown to be successful.
The long-awaited result of the first AIDS vaccine tested on people
and produced by VaxGen Inc based in the United States, only reduced
the rate of HIV infection by 3.8 per cent in 5,400 men and women
considered at high risk, the company announced in a statement
released on February 24.
But a closer analysis of VaxGen's figures showed that of those
tested the results were significantly higher among Asians and
blacks, with those who received the vaccine having a 67 per cent
lower rate of infection than those given a placebo.
The company said it hoped this might be a first step towards
fighting a virus that has killed 28 million people worldwide and
currently infects 40 million.
(China Daily March 26, 2003)