Since 1798 when Edward Jenner discovered that cowpox virus protected people against smallpox, most scientists recognize that vaccination is the most efficient method, cost-wise and logistically, to protect humans against infectious diseases.
We believe this will also prove to be true for AIDS. Vaccines prevent clinical signs of disease and are, by far, the most cost-effective and beneficial method available to combat infectious diseases in the world today and in the foreseeable future.
The individual expense incurred by vaccination is minimal compared to costs associated with drug treatment, which is not only expensive but often limited in its long term effectiveness. The axiom "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" is a valid comparison.
There are several small and large biopharmaceutical companies pursuing AIDS vaccine research and development, including Merck, Chiron, American Home Products, Wyeth, Sanofi-Aventis, Glaxo-Smith Kline and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Vaccine Research Center [VRC]. Other AIDS vaccines are in varying stages of research, testing and clinical trials including those developed by Oxford University, International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), Therion, IDT, FIT Biotech, AlphaVax, University of North Carolina, Yale University Institute for Human Virology, and a few others.
Even though many of the competitors listed above have greater financial and human resources than we do, to our knowledge none of our competitors' products have, to date, demonstrated the level of protection and duration of protection (in large scale non-human primate trials) elicited by GeoVax's vaccines.
Furthermore, some of the AIDS vaccines developed by our competitors require as many as eight or more vaccinations per person, which we believe will lead to patients failing to adhere to their vaccination schedule. Also, many competitor vaccine development programs require very complicated vaccine compositions. For all of these reasons, we believe that it may be possible for our vaccine to compete successfully in the marketplace.