Almost 40 million people worldwide live with HIV/AIDS, with an estimated 2.5 million new cases per year. Therefore, there has been a large global effort to develop an effective vaccine against the virus.

HIV-1 vaccine development has been challenging but recent clinical trials have been promising.

A new study in the Journal of Clinical Investigation discusses the results from a clinical trial that evaluated the immune response following different HIV vaccine regimes.

Nicole Frahm and colleagues tested prime-boost regimes combining a New York vaccinia HIV clade B (NYVAC-B) vaccine and a recombinant adenovirus 5-vectored (rAd5-vectored) vaccine in a cohort of healthy volunteers.

Individuals that received the rAd5-vectored vaccine followed by the NYVAC-B vaccine exhibited the strongest anti-HIV immune responses.

A regime in which individuals received the NYVAC-B vaccine prior to the rAd5-vectored vaccine was not as effective. The results from this study will be important for the design of further clinical trials to evaluate potential HIV-1 vaccine regimes.

TITLE: HIV-specific humoral responses benefit from stronger prime in phase Ib clinical triall