Consortium to Expedite Vaccine Work

The Global HIV/AIDS Vaccine Enterprise, an international alliance of groups conducting or supporting vaccine research, released a plan in January to speed the development of an effective vaccine. It calls for the development of new standard assays, creating a system of core reference labs to service satellite labs, establishing a global quality assurance function to encompass all participating labs, and establishing a common source of reagents, antibodies, and viral isolates. The enterprise also hopes to develop a set of criteria to help guide decisions about which vaccines should be tested and which ones should move to larger trials.