Phase One Trial of China’s AIDS Vaccine Near Completion

Text of report in English by official Chinese news agency Xinhua (New China News Agency)

Nanning, 17 September: Fifteen volunteers were injected with Chinese home made AIDS vaccine Sunday [18 September] in Nanning, capital of south China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, a signal China’s phase one AIDS vaccine trial test has entered the final phase, said a Chinese medical expert.

Chen Jie, deputy director of Guangxi autonomous regional disease control centre, said clinical data of all the volunteers will serve a scientific basis to show whether the second phase trial project of AIDS vaccine will start. All the 49 volunteers for the phase-one trial test, divided into eight groups, were all in good physical condition and no one ever quit.

The State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) approved the first clinical phase of the new AIDS vaccine on 25 November 2004. There have been 35 AIDS vaccine trial tests on humans around the world, most of which are still at the early phase. With its first AIDS case reported in 1985, China now has an estimated 840,000 HIV carriers and AIDS patients, according to sources with Chinese medical authorities.