SOUTH AFRICA: Local AIDS vaccine to be tested soon

South Africa's first locally developed prototype AIDS vaccine is likely to be tested within the next few months, the 'Beeld' newspaper reported on Wednesday.

Medical Research Council (MRC) chief Dr Malegapuru Makgoba, showed a bottle of the vaccine, called Alpha Vax Pilot #1, to delegates of the Black Management Forum in Johannesburg last week, the report said. Alpha Vax, a US North Carolina pharmaceutical company that manufactures the vaccine, would ship the first consignment of the vaccine to the country as soon as it had been approved by the South African Medicines Control Council(MCC).

MRC Corporate Affairs manager Nandi Solomon was reported as saying the drug had been approved by the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for first phase trials. The FDA would make its written report available as soon as MCC approval procedures were completed, Solomon said. This is likely to happen by the end of November.
"The first day of trails will depend on approval by the ethics committee and this will hopefully be by March next year," she was quoted as saying.

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