Three decades of advances in HIV treatment and prevention have curbed mortality from the HIV epidemic, but every year since 2010 2 million more people around the world have been infected with HIV. This is a sad reminder that we still have not put the brakes on this clever viral menace.
Millions of lives and the hopes of an entire generation thus hang on the development of an effective HIV vaccine. Those hopes were rekindled in November 2016 with the opening of a major new HIV vaccine trial in South Africa. Called HVTN 702, the trial will enroll 5,400 adults to receive five injections of an investigational HIV vaccine or a matching placebo.
This latest step in a global effort to develop an effective HIV vaccine builds on a legacy of failure, hubris, and reinvention. Each stage of this history has much to teach us about the development of preventive vaccines in general.
