A Dutch vaccine developer, Crucell, received a $16 million contract to develop a vaccine for the AIDS virus. The contract was sponsored by the NIH's allergy and infectious disease group, and involves a collaboration with Charles River Labs and the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center at Harvard.
I hypothesize that the reason that Crucell was chosen was due to their AdVac technology, which uses the same viral vector that I use in my research---an adenovirus. So, it seems that this vaccine may use a competing virus (which is engineered to be helpful and replicate a gene of interest) to combat the AIDS virus. This technology is already in use in a malaria vaccine in collaboration with GlaxoSmithKline, and in a tuberculosis vaccine with Aeras Global TB Vaccine Foundation.
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