How Will We Finally Create a Successful Vaccine for HIV?

Bill Snow

Director, Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise

Our current obstacles are getting efficacy trials moving. Even the mechanics, the cost and the time that it takes just to set up a big trial of a product are daunting. People think that you can simply get some product and then have the trial. In fact, the whole business of getting the product almost needs to be started before you decide to have the trial because it takes so long. That's the period we're in now. We're in this incredibly frustrating time when we want to do the experiments and we can't yet.

Our long-term issues are, "Will the results from RV144 teach us enough to make a good enough vaccine?" And the answer to that is very likely not, though it'll get us part of the way there. What we really need to do is understand mucosal vaccines. How do we get the vaccine where it's really needed? And antibody vaccines, this is the big problem that nobody knows how to solve actually.