AIDS vaccine goal of major new US institute

A medical institute dedicated to finding a vaccine for AIDS has been established in the United States.

Harvard University, Massachusetts General Hospital and The Massachusetts Institute of Technology have joined forces to form the Philip T and Susan M Ragon Institute, with an endowment of $100 million (£68 million).

The body's director, Bruce Walker MD, said: "The Ragon Institute offers an incredible opportunity to transform academic research by integrating fields with tremendous potential synergies that have been separated by traditional boundaries between disciplines and by rapidly funding the most promising ideas.

"Recent scientific advances have brought us closer to the elusive goal of an AIDS vaccine, but reaching that goal will require broad collaboration to adapt breakthroughs in the physical sciences and engineering to our understanding of interactions between viruses and the immune system."

According to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, there were an estimated 33 million people living with HIV around the world in 2007.