Biopharma needs a better incentive system.
A major new trial testing an experimental HIV vaccine regimen began yesterday in South Africa. The regimen—which consists of two vaccines, developed respectively by Sanofi Pasteur and GSK—is the first to be tried in wide-scale human testing since 2009, and is only the seventh full vaccine trial against the virus that now infects some 37 million people across the globe.
In such a moment of optimism, it seems a bit curmudgeonly to offer a question like, “What took so long?” But some of you may be wondering just that. HIV was discovered, after all, in 1983. Why are we still testing vaccines 33 years later?
