World Bank HIV Vaccine Industry Study: Draft Summary

* Attitude towards LDC markets
* Barriers to the development of an HIV vaccine
* Impact of a LDC market guarantee mechanism
* Reactions to/suggestions for different types of guarantee mechanism
Each company's responses were individual, and influenced by their circumstances (in
particular, size, current activity level and participation in the market for existing
vaccines). However, on certain issues, the interviewees responses were very
consistent.
3. Interview findings
Activity levels
Our interviews covered a wide range of companies, levels of activity and scientific
approaches. We formed two overall conclusions.
First, given development and trials timelines, any vaccine available over the next
seven years will almost certainly be based on either the GP120 or pox vector
candidates currently in Phase 2/Phase 3 trials, or some combination of the two.
Outside the companies directly involved in developing and testing these candidates,
there is considerable scepticism as to their likely efficacy: however, as we note below,
such scepticism can only reflect probabilities of success rather than certainty of
failure.
Some of the smaller companies have novel constructs or approaches, about which
they were optimistic, and which conceivably could be available in less than a decade.
We lack the scientific expertise to form any judgement about the real potential of such
approaches. We would note, however, that in the current funding environment for
biotech HIV vaccine work, the likelihood of these candidates moving rapidly through
the development stages is quite low.
Our second observation is that, whilst all our interviewees recognised the seriousness
of the HIV epidemic, the actual level of effort across the industry is not
commensurate with the health threat. With the exception of a few small companies,
HIV vaccine development is not usually the primary focus of vaccine development
efforts. We would estimate that fewer than 200 scientists in the private sector are
dedicated to HIV vaccine related work, and this number probably exaggerates the
resources devoted by the private sector, since some of these scientists are grantsupported by the public sector. We would add that it is our impression that this
position represents a significant improvement as compared to three or four years ago.
In our view, this mismatch between the magnitude of the threat and the lack of
urgency or priority given to HIV vaccine development across the private sector in
general can only be explained by an inability for companies to see a realistic
commercial return on the required investment.

Perceptions of potential market