This was the urging of one of the world’€™s greatest AIDS researchers, Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), at the close of the Paris AIDS Vaccine Conference yesterday (Thurs).

The modest immune protection of recent Thai vaccine ‘€“ the first vaccine ever to show any effect against AIDS — must be ‘€œmaximised’€, urged Fauci.

Results released a month ago on the Thai trial involving 16,400 people, showed 30 percent of those who got a course of six vaccine injections were protected from HIV.

Unlike many other viruses, HIV is formidable which makes the challenges for developing a vaccine massive.

‘€œWith few exceptions, the disease is relentlessly progressive and virtually no one recovers spontaneously,’€ said Fauci. ‘€œThe virus is never ultimately cleared and eradicated.’€

But when a person is first infected, there is a window of opportunity.

‘€œEarly HIV infection is extraordinarily critical for vaccine development,’€ said Fauci, as the virus showed ‘€œvulnerability’€ when it first enters the body.

At the closing ceremony, Nobel prize-winner Dr Francoise Barré-Sinoussi also stressed that the Thai trial needed to be interrogated so to understand ‘€œhow and why the vaccine reduced the risk of infection’€.

‘€œBe careful about dogma in HIV research. We need new technologies, innovation and high risk concepts in vaccine research,’€ said Barré-Sinoussi , co-winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize for Medicine for discovering HIV with Luc Montagnier.

Dr Yves Levy of the French National Agency for AIDS Research described the atmosphere of the conference as ‘€œvery special’€.

‘€œSomething special happened in Paris and I hope this is the beginning of a new phase of vaccine research,’€ said Levy. ‘€œThere was a very special atmosphere of friendship and collaboration although we are in competition with one another.’€