ScienceInsider

By Jon Cohen

A large clinical trial of an AIDS vaccine has, for the first time, yielded positive results. But researchers immediately questioned the relevance of the data, which indicated that the vaccine offered only modest protection against infection by HIV.

The controversial trial, conducted with more than 16,000 volunteers in Thailand over the past 6 years, tested the effectiveness of two AIDS vaccines used together as a one-two punch. Researchers randomly assigned an equal number of participants who were at average risk of becoming infected by HIV to receive either the two vaccines or a saline placebo. At the end of the study in June, 51 of the vaccinated people had become infected within 3 years of receiving their last shot, compared with 74 people in the placebo group. The p value, which indicates whether results are due to chance, was less than 0.039, just below the widely accepted but arbitrary “significance” cutoff of 0.05. Surprisingly, the vaccine did not appear to suppress levels of the virus in the 51 people who became infected. No serious adverse events were seen in either group.

Many AIDS vaccine researchers had predicted that the study would fail, and its sponsors are thrilled by the efficacy, marginal though it may be. “Although the level of protection was modest, we think the study is a major scientific advance,” said Colonel Jerome Kim, HIV vaccines product manager for the U.S. Army, which collaborated with the Thai Ministry of Health to conduct the efficacy trial. “We were all pretty energized by the results.” The U.S. military and Thai officials will announce the results of the trial, the largest ever held of an AIDS vaccine (see table on other AIDS vaccine trials after the jump), at press conferences today in Thailand and the United States.

Several longtime critics of the study, which cost $105 million, were dumbfounded—and circumspect—when they learned the results.

by Richard Stone

Earlier this summer, South Korea merged three science agencies to form the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF). The new body will control a $2 billion pot of money, roughly 20% of the government’s annual R&D spending. Science recently caught up with NRF’s first president, computer scientist Chan-Mo Park.

Q: By any measure, Korea is a technology powerhouse, but its achievements have come more from emulation than innovation. How will NRF change that?

NEW DELHI—India’s maiden moon mission, Chandrayaan-1, has come to a shuddering and unexpected halt. On 29 August, the Indian Space Research Organization lost all contact with the spacecraft after a catastrophic failure of its electronics, said ISRO Chair G. Madhavan Nair.

TOKYO—The Ministry of Education's budget request for the next fiscal year has some welcome news for research, including a new teaching assistant program to employ graduate students, dramatically expanded funding for the space program, and a big increase in support for grants to researchers. But there’s a catch: In recent years the ministry, which funds the bulk of Japan's public research, has been encouraged to aim high, only to have its requests cut down by science advisory bodies, politicians, and the parsimonious Ministry of Finance.

TOKYO—Research involving human embryonic stem (ES) cells will become easier in Japan as a result of new ethical review requirements that take effect today.

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA—The Australian Stem Cell Centre (ASCC) hopes that a new business plan will help it regain momentum in the last 2 years of its term. The plan, announced today, would shift ASCC’s emphasis from commercialization to research. “I’m extremely pleased,” says Ernst Wolvetang, who directs ASCC’s program on induced pluripotent stem cells. “It’s a testament to the revamped ASCC that it’s truly inclusive of a wide range of new initiatives.”

ASCC, a $90 million government-funded center of excellence, was created in 2002 to get Australian stem cell researchers working together and to commercialize their findings. Differences of opinion on how to achieve those dual goals have roiled the center since its inception. With 2 years and $25 million of funding left, the stakeholders—nine universities and institutes—earlier this year drafted a plan that called for forging large-scale collaborations.

With the government’s stamp of approval, ASCC this week unveiled a revised plan with collaborations in four broad research streams as its centerpiece:

BEIJING—The Chinese government has banned the controversial application of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) for so-called Internet addiction.

Although there is no meeting of the minds on whether Internet addiction is a genuine disorder, Chinese researchers have sought to put diagnosis and treatment on a more solid footing. Casting a shadow over legitimate clinical practice and research, a clinic in Shandong Province in eastern China had gained notoriety for applying electric shocks to unanesthetized teenagers whose parents had admitted them to the clinic against their will.

NEW DELHI—Joining a global trend, India is giving science a boost in the face of the worldwide economic downturn. On 6 July, the newly elected government headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh presented its first budget, which grants science agencies a roughly 12% increase over last year. The overall R&D budget is expected to be around $2.5 billion; the exact figure has not yet been tabulated.

BEIJING—The United States and Japan are not the only countries hoping that a massive windfall for science will help rescue their economies. In response to the global financial crisis, China is upping its R&D spending in 2009 to $25.7 billion, a hefty 25.6% increase over 2008, says Du Zhanyuan, vice minister of the Ministry of Science and Technology here. With this increase, China is rapidly closing the science funding gap with Japan, which this year has allotted $37.1 billion for R&D.

BEIJING—China has perhaps the strictest quarantine procedures in the world to limit the spread of the Influenza A H1N1 virus—as I found out firsthand today.

I’m the Asia editor for Science. My family and I have lived in Beijing for nearly 2 years. Earlier today, we arrived on a flight to Beijing’s capital airport from London, via Amsterdam. I had taken part in the World Conference of Science Journalists last week in London and my family and I had visited relatives in the United Kingdom.

In response to the pandemic, a medical team boards every international flight arriving in China and scans each passenger with an infrared thermometer. We disembarked, assuming everything was okay. But at a counter where passengers turn in medical declarations, we were pulled to the side and told that our younger son, Quinn, who is 6, had a slight fever and would be tested for the virus—a process that would take “1 hour or three.”