Wyeth Pharmaceuticals has been awarded a five-year, $32 million contract from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) to develop therapeutic HIV vaccines. Wyeth will develop the vaccines in conjunction with researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, Duke University in North Carolina and the Beth Israel/Deaconess Hospital in Boston, MA. The award is part of NIAID's HIV Vaccine Design and Development Teams (HVDDT) program. NIAID is an agency of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

“The Wyeth HIV vaccine program is focused on the identification and clinical evaluation of vaccine approaches capable of eliciting robust and sustained anti-HIV immunological responses,” said Emilio A. Emini, PhD, executive vice president for Wyeth Vaccines Research & Development. “We look forward to continuing our work with the NIH on a program that has been a very gratifying scientific partnership.”

Previous NIAID/Wyeth contracts through the HVDDT program have led to the development and manufacturing of HIV vaccine prototypes. These prototypes are currently in Phase I clinical studies.

Source: Wyeth news release dated December 1, 2005