Vaccines in AIDS. Present state of knowledge

The identification of a virus, HIV-1, as the etiological agent of AIDS has opened the door to the development of a vaccine against this disease, for both prophylactic and therapeutic purposes. A number of different vaccine strategies have been developed in pursuit of this aim. The first major advances in this direction were the reports that some candidate vaccines could prevent infection of chimpanzees with HIV-1. Human trials have now been initiated in HIV-1 seronegative and seropositive individuals and the details of the vaccine strategies involved and the results obtained to date are described.