New AIDS Vaccine in Capsule

The new AIDS vaccine comes in a capsule and it's made using a common cold virus called an adenovirus, genetically engineered with a tiny piece of the AIDS virus. 

It's only a very early stage experiment, meant to show the vaccine is safe. However, if it is, it could be a start not only towards a much-needed vaccine against the AIDS virus, but needle-free vaccines against many different infections.

Researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center are testing it in their specially designed facility usually used to test live influenza vaccines. Volunteers to test this new vaccine that is needle-free are needed. You have to be willing to stay locked up in your room for 12 days.

The reason is that the adenovirus used to make the vaccine is "alive" - it can replicate and presumably will spread in the digestive tract. Tests in monkeys show it should be safe, but the researchers are taking extra care because this particular strain, called adenovirus 26, only lives well in humans.

It's been severely weakened, but so-called live vaccines tend to prompt a stronger immune response than "killed" vaccines.

According to Dr. Dan Barouch of Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, who helped design the vaccine,"We have a strong suspicion that it is going to be safe.  

The trial of this vaccine started Tuesday, and is being paid for by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.