Saturday, October 15, 2011

Scientists working to develop HIV and AIDS vaccines in Georgia - Rome News-tribune

“That’s a market worth $1.5 billion to $4 billion annually,” Dodd said.
Umm about the money or finding a Vaccines?


David Dodd, chariman of GeoVax,
(Doug Walker, RN-T.com)
Georgia is a developing hotbed for biological science. “There is a lot of biological life science research going on in Georgia that most Georgians know nothing about. It’s all about improving life,” said GeoVax Labs chairman David Dodd at the Greater Rome Chamber of Commerce Spectrum of Technology IV on Friday.

Dodd said that his one of his companies, VaxyGen Manufacturing, had just signed on to become the newest member of the Georgia Research Alliance.

The company is working with several academic partners in Georgia to cut down on the lead-time of taking AIDS and HIV vaccines from concept through clinical trials to the marketplace. “We are leading the world in the development of vaccines for HIV/AIDS,” Dodd said.

Dodd said that the estimated cost that an individual will pay during his or her lifetime after contracting HIV is close to half a million dollars. Nationally, the cost of treating the virus in the United States is an estimated $27.5 billion each year.

He said that if a preventative vaccine that was just 50 percent effective could be given to 30 percent of the population, that it could reduce the number of new infections by close to 17 million over the next 15 years.

“That’s a market worth $1.5 billion to $4 billion annually,” Dodd said. He said the good news related to HIV/AIDS is that the number of new infections each year has dropped from its high of close to 130,000 annually in the late 1980s to approximately 55,000-58,000 a year today.

His company is the second phase of development for a couple of vaccines and told the audience that of some 80 clinical programs for preventative vaccines, only five have been completed successfully and GeoVax has two of the five. He is hoping to get actual clinical trial started for the drugs sometime in 2012.

He told the large group at The Forum in Rome that the biological life sciences work being done in Georgia is second to none.

“We’re translating science into technology and adding value to lives,” Dodd said. “It presents tremendous opportunities to continue to build value and build jobs”


Read more: RN-T.com - Scientists working to develop HIV and AIDS vaccines in Georgia 

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