Research
By Reuters
AMSTERDAM, Oct 9, 2006 (Reuters) - Dutch biotechnology firm Crucell on says it had secured a $16.2 million U.S. contract to develop a vaccine against HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The contract is with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), the company said in a statement The program will be fully covered until the clinical trials start. Crucell shares rose after the announcement, and were up 2.4 percent at 18.77 euros by 1330 GMT. Crucell will collaborate with the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center at Harvard Medical School and Charles River Laboratories Inc., it said. "Multiple high-level vaccine initiatives are essential if we are to be successful in delivering the safe, effective and accessible HIV vaccine that the world needs so urgently," Crucell's Chief Scientific Officer Jaap Goudsmit said. The firm's PER.C6 gene technology uses human cells as a platform to produce drugs. Researchers are also using the technology in hopes of developing vaccines against illnesses such cancer. There is currently no vaccine against AIDS, but two vaccine candidates are in advanced human trials -- one made by Merck and Co. (MRK.N:) and another by Sanofi-Aventis SA (SASY.PA:). The AIDS virus infects more than 39 million people globally, more than 60 percent of them in sub-Saharan Africa. It kills more than 4 million people every year and has killed 25 million people since it was identified in the 1980s. It is difficult to vaccinate against because the virus infects the very immune system cells that are usually stimulated by a vaccine. www.reuters.com