Eleven years ago, world leaders affirmed via the United Nations endorsed Millennium Development document, an obligation to protect children and the most vulnerable people in the world. One of the eight constituent declarations of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) pledged to utilise all available resources to “halt and reverse the spread of HIV.”
Despite this assurance provided by the world leaders and the resources, financial and otherwise, channelled into the global fight against the epidemic, millions of people around the world are still living with and dying from the disease. The World Health Organisation’s (WHO) recent A New Health Sector Agenda for HIV/AIDS study reveals that over 60 million people have been infected with HIV while 25 million people have died of AIDS since the epidemic began. UNICEF also estimates that around 4.3 to 5.9 million young people aged between 15 and 24 were living with HIV in 2009.
To date, the bulk of the treatment available and administered to people infected with HIV are post-exposure prophylaxis (i.e. administered immediately after exposure) rather than preventative. Although there are currently no available vaccines for HIV, a HIV vaccine is considered the most effective means, or indeed the only means by which the AIDS pandemic can be eradicated.
However, Professor Julian Ma, the joint head of the infection and immunity research centre at St. George’s Hospital Medical School in London may yet lead his team to the development of the ever elusive HIV vaccine which may end the condemnation of millions of people to needless suffering and early death caused by HIV.
In an interview published by The Observer in August 2011, Professor Ma explains how the process of modifying plant proteins can hugely reduce the cost of new drugs. The Pharma-Planta project, which has been given permission by the UK medical regulator, the Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, to carry out human trials of a monoclonal antibody grown in tobacco plants that can be used to prevent HIV infection, aims to neutralise the virus before it can cause the infection.
Professor Ma explains that tobacco was chosen for several reasons namely that its seeds are dehydrated protein-storage bodies, that the plant is not part of the food chain, and thirdly because it produces a huge amount of biomass. Professor Ma asserts that the anti-HIV antibody will be used in combination with one or two antibodies to prevent the potential of the virus gaining resistance to the constantly mutating virus.
Encouragingly for the developing world and aid agencies working within affected regions around the world, the early drug development stage of the new tobacco- produced antiviral drug is expected to be cheaper than that required by drugs produced via conventional means. It is no doubt hoped that a vaccine is developed to prevent more infections and deaths from HIV. Undoubtedly, aid campaigners will certainly echo the sentiments espoused by the present writer which avers that it is revivifying to contemplate that the goal of producing an affordable HIV eradicating vaccine is not as unattainable as was previously thought.
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