HIV Vaccine Trials in Thailand and Path to HIV Cure
Issued Date
2022-11-01
Resource Type
ISSN
01252208
Scopus ID
2-s2.0-85141974958
Journal Title
Journal of the Medical Association of Thailand
Volume
105
Issue
11
Start Page
1171
End Page
1182
Rights Holder(s)
SCOPUS
Bibliographic Citation
Journal of the Medical Association of Thailand Vol.105 No.11 (2022) , 1171-1182
Suggested Citation
Leelarasamee A., Yoksan S., Sutthent R., Sirisinha S., Siraprapasiri T. HIV Vaccine Trials in Thailand and Path to HIV Cure. Journal of the Medical Association of Thailand Vol.105 No.11 (2022) , 1171-1182. 1182. doi:10.35755/jmedassocthai.2022.11.13707 Retrieved from: https://repository.li.mahidol.ac.th/handle/20.500.14594/85392
Title
HIV Vaccine Trials in Thailand and Path to HIV Cure
Other Contributor(s)
Abstract
Thailand has had over 30 years of experiences and development in fighting HIV/AIDS with successful results in terms of providing access to prevention, testing, antiretroviral treatment (ART) and care for over 90% of the affected patients. As a consequence, approximately 400,000 patients on ART currently have undetectable viral load, lead normal lives, and are untransmittable. However, ART must remain in place forever or else the viral load in blood will rebound. Recent advance in stem cell transplant, gene editing, and therapeutic HIV vaccine development yields hope on designing novel approach for an HIV elimination or functional cure. The National AIDS Prevention and Alleviation Committee of Thailand has set up the Subcommittee on HIV Vaccine Trials to oversee and endorse experimental vaccine regimen with sound and adequate scientific background to be tested in Thailand. So far, at least 23 small and large studies have been conducted in collaboration with the international organizations and at least 10 articles were published after the studies ended and cited over 2,726 times. One landmarked trial using notable vaccine regimen, evaluated in the RV144 trial, has shown effectiveness in reducing new infections by 31.2%. The conduction of these research in Thailand have facilitated the development of infrastructure, networking, and experience sufficiently to further support future field trial with a notable HIV cure approach. Since there are over 400,000 HIV cases with undetectable viral load in Thailand, this condition poses an excellent opportunity for testing a novel HIV cure approaches to eliminate HIV or functional HIV cure. The Subcommittee has reviewed current novel methods in this regard and strongly welcomed international organizations with similar aim, to test an innovative therapeutic HIV vaccine or a combination therapy to finally end HIV/AIDS in Thailand by the year 2030.