Complex vaccine for acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), self-developed by Chinese researchers, has been approved by the State Food and Drug Administration on November 25 for the first-phase clinical research.

It is the first time for China to have conducted clinical research on AIDS vaccines. The progress marks that China has been in pace with the world in terms of research on AIDS vaccines.

Complex AIDS vaccine is composed of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) vaccine and recombinant virus carrier vaccine.

Chinese scientists began the research by studying domestically popular virus genes in 1996, including the envelope albumen and core albumen of the virus. They found that human body will become immune to AIDS virus after the injection of the two kinds of vaccine.

Researchers attacked a monkey with AIDS virus after injecting the complex vaccine into its body, and found no abnormal reactions occurred.

Human body test, or stage I clinical test, of the complex AIDS vaccine aims to further assess the security of the vaccine, an SFDA official said.

The government will consider whether to launch stage II and stage III tests on the basis of the result of the stage I test.

SFDA officials said that they would accelerate approval process of all kinds of anti-AIDS drugs to help speed up relevant clinical researches.

According to experts, AIDS vaccine is the only solution to stop the wildfire spread of the grievous infectious disease. Currently, even the "cocktail treatment", the most effective measure to deal with AIDS so far, can only stabilize or ease the AIDS symptoms instead of killing the virus in the body.

By People's Daily Online