But‚ he cautioned: “It is important to state that this is a pre-vaccine which we are hopeful will yield a vaccine that will go a long way to preventing HIV in the long run.”
No date has yet been set for the commencement of the trials‚ but the Medical Research Council’s president‚ Professor Glenda Grey‚ told SAfm's AM Live on Monday morning they are set to begin soon.
She told the radio programme that it will the biggest medical trial ever conducted in the country. James said initial trials conducted in Thailand saw scientists “inserting some HIV coding genes into a virus (the canarypox virus) that show signs of stimulating an immune response to HIV”.