Emory to help effort to find vaccine for HIV/AIDS

ATLANTA - Emory University is set to get about $7 million for its part in an intensive national effort to develop a vaccine against HIV and AIDS.

The seven-year initiative is funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Instituted of Health. A projected total of $186 million will fund the new Centers for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Immunology & Immunogen Discovery. It will be directed by the Scripps Research Institute and Duke University.

The project will be supported by scientific leaders from Emory, the Rockefeller University/Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Ragon Institute.

The goal is to accelerate vaccine development by supporting multidisciplinary research into immune responses that prevent or contain HIV infection and by generating model vaccine components that can induce these protective immune responses.