In a move to reinvigorate the mission to create an AIDS vaccine, an international research body on Thursday named Canadian doctor Alan Bernstein to lead the team of top scientists dedicated to the effort.

Bernstein, outgoing president of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, officially took up the challenge Thursday in a swearing-in ceremony in Cape Town, South Africa.

Dr. Alan Bernstein, show at an Ottawa news conference in March 2002, will set in motion research that will hopefully lead to the development of an HIV vaccine.
(Tom Hanson/Canadian Press)

As the first executive director of the new body, the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise, Bernstein takes on the task of setting in motion research that will hopefully lead to the development of an HIV vaccine.

"This morning, [Bernstein] said the vaccine was not his line of expertise nor was HIV research," the CBC's Bruce Edwards reported Thursday morning from Cape Town. "But he sees his role as being a facilitator to bring all these scientists and pharmaceutical companies together to try and [expedite] the process of finding an HIV vaccine."

HIV affects more than 40 million people worldwide, according to the enterprise, and another five million people are infected each year.

"The challenge now is to … implement a coherent, integrated and global scientific strategy that will hasten development of an effective and safe vaccine," Bernstein said in a release. "The world expects nothing less of those engaged in this endeavour."

So far, the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise — formed in the shadow of an abandoned project funded by the HIV Vaccine Trials Network — has received $20 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation over the next four years. The U.S. National Institutes of Health also committed up to $7 million over the next seven years to the effort.

$750 million to support plan

In all, the enterprise has mobilized more than $750 million to date in support of the strategy, according to a release, but it is not yet known what its annual operating budget will be, Edwards reported.

The Canadian government also contributed a "significant amount of money," he added, but could not provide precise figures.

The latest effort to speed up the development of an HIV vaccine comes after a setback last month, when a promising experimental AIDS vaccine failed to work in its first large-scale test. The developer, Merck & Co., suspended the study that had been funded by the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

The enterprise plans to focus on six key research areas:

• Vaccine discovery.
• Laboratory standardization.
• Product development and manufacturing.
• Clinical trials capacity.
• Regulatory issues.
• Intellectual property.

Before taking up the post with the enterprise, Bernstein was the founding president of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research for seven years, building it into what is considered one of the world's leading research agencies. He graduated from the University of Toronto in 1972 with a PhD in medical biophysics.

"Dr. Bernstein has a proven track record building a world-class scientific organization that brings together researchers, funders, advocates and industry," NIAID director Dr. Anthony Fauci said in a release.