Research Progress on the Prevention of AIDS in China

The HIV epidemics in China started among IDUs in the late 1980s. The 2nd wave of the epidemic was in the paid plasma donors in central China in the mid 1990s. Sexual transmitted HIV cases have increased rapidly and taken up over half of the infection since 2007. The HIV epidemic in China is at a turning point of spreading from high risk groups to the general population. Chinese government has launched an impressive AIDS campaign, called Four Free One Care ( free VCT, ART, PMTCT and education & provide financial assistants to affected family). Various intervention packages, including condom promotion, methadone substitutions and needle exchange programs are conducted.

The paper will discuss those scientific challenges facing the current AIDS control efforts in the country, as well as providing examples of the type of researches needed to overcome those obstacles in areas of better measuring the epidemic and its trends, effectively organizing comprehensive prevention, providing sustainable treatment and care, and strengthening international cooperation towards an effective vaccine.

AIDS vaccine is the ultimate weapon to conquer AIDS. We China CDC chose CRF07 the most prevalent HIV-1 strain in China as our vaccine strain. The DNA and recombinant VTT vaccine candidates (rVTT) expressing HIV-1 CRF 07 gag, pol and env genes have been developed. In the preclinical research it has shown that the two vaccine candidates both can stimulate strong cellular and humoral immune responses against HIV in mice and monkeys with long lasting immune memory feature. The vaccine is currently under phase I clinical trial in China.