Boost for AIDS research with African children

An Oxford academic has received a grant, worth $650,000 (c.£392,300) over five years, to continue her work with colleagues in Kenya and the Gambia investigating immunity to HIV among African children. Dr Sarah Rowland-Jones (pictured left), MRC Senior Fellow and Research Student at Christ Church, received the first UK Elizabeth Glaser Scientist Award, by the Elizabeth Glaser Paediatric AIDS Foundation of California. Most of the world's HIV-infected children are African. In Kenya, one quarter of the children with HIV are infected at birth while another 20 per cent are infected by breast feeding. With up to one third of adults infected with HIV, an increasing number of children become orphans because of AIDS. Dr Rowland-Jones said: `There is an urgent need to develop vaccines which protect adults against African HIV strains and so prevent infection of their children. `We are looking at the small number of adults and children, who either escape infection despite definite exposure—because, we think, they have some form of immunity to HIV—or who have the infection but survive an unusually long time.' It is thought a successful vaccine will need to stimulate the immune system to create immune cells (called CTL) which can kill HIV-infected cells. However, too little is known about the immune response of Africans to African strains of HIV, which is different from those in the West. `Our work will help in designing and evaluating candidate vaccines in Africa, but may also be useful in Western studies, since HIV transmission from mother to baby is most often seen in African families in the UK, and from African-American mothers in the USA,' said Dr Rowland-Jones. The Elizabeth Glaser Scientist Award was established to carry on the work of the late wife of the American television actor, Paul Michael Glaser, who co-founded the Paediatric Aids Foundation when she discovered that she and both her children were HIV positive. The Foundation's goals include reducing HIV transmission from an HIV-infected mother to her newborn, prolonging and improving the lives of children living with HIV, eliminating HIV in infected children and promoting awareness and compassion about HIV/AIDS.