Global Efforts against HIV Epidemic and HIV Vaccine Development

Although the tremendous effort has been paid by scientists for creating HIV vaccine over the past three decades since the discovery of HIV-1, the HIV vaccine development still has a long way to go. Only one HIV vaccine, RV144, has been proved to be moderately effective by the clinical trials, but there has been much debate about its usefulness. The difficulties of HIV vaccine development includes the attacks to host’s immune system by HIV and the emergence of various escape mutants. The necessity of large clinical trials for the proof of efficacy also makes HIV vaccine development difficult. One the other hand, Treatment as Prevention (TasP) or Preexposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) has revealed to be highly effective for HIV prevention. Those preventive strategies using antiretroviral therapy is one of the recent main stream of HIV policy worldwide. However, it is believed that a sustained end of the HIV pandemic is guaranteed by the combination of nonvaccine prevention and the development of a safe and effective HIV vaccine. The continuous efforts are needed for the HIV vaccine development.