Gates Commits $287M to HIV Vaccine
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More than twenty years after scientists began searching for an HIV vaccine, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation this week announced a major effort to bring together researchers from around the world with a collaborative new business model.
The foundation announced 16 grants totaling $287 million over five years to set up an international network of HIV vaccine scientists. A third of the money — five of the grants — will pay for central laboratories and data analysis facilities to test researchers’ findings.
The hope is to more definitively identify the most effective vaccine approaches and then direct future efforts toward those ideas, said Dr. Nicholas Hellmann, acting director of the Gates Foundation’s HIV, TB and reproductive health program.
“Unfortunately, developing an effective HIV vaccine has proven to be tremendously difficult, and despite the committed efforts of many researchers around the world, progress simply has not been fast enough,” Dr. Hellmann said.
The $287 million commitment is the Gates Foundation’s single largest investment in the area of HIV-AIDS research. Before this week’s announcement, the foundation had already announced HIVAIDS grants totaling more than $10 million in 2006. Total grants in this area in 2005 were more than $53 million.
