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The US National Institutes of Health has decided not to fund full-scale clinical trials of the leading AIDS vaccine in its pipeline.

At a conference in Seattle, United States, this week, 60 investigators who have been evaluating the vaccine in a midsize human study learned that an interim analysis showed weaker-than-hoped-for immune responses against HIV.

Researchers had pinned high hopes on the vaccine, a concoction made by the Franco-German pharmaceutical company Aventis Pasteur that has HIV genes stitched into a harmless bird virus, canarypox.

Reference: Science 295, 1616 (2002)