GeoVax Labs (GOVX) plans to move to Phase 2 with vaccine.
Shares of Atlanta-based biopharmaceutical company GeoVax Labs, Inc. (OTC: BB: GOVX, Stock Forum) jumped 25.3% Monday to 16.3 cents after the company provided an update on its progress towards entering Phase 2 preventative human clinical trial testing and plans to proceed into therapeutic human trials with its AIDS vaccine.
The Company's Phase 2 trial, conducted by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) supported HIV Vaccine Trials Network (HVTN), will involve 225 healthy volunteers from the United States and South America, and will further evaluate the safety and immunogenicity of the GeoVax preventative vaccine. Subject to FDA approval, the trial is currently scheduled to start early this fall.
GeoVax also announced summary data from a pilot study on therapeutic vaccination in simian immunodeficiency virus infected non-human primates with the SIV prototype for the GeoVax AIDS vaccine. The company notes that “the outstanding results from the study revealed the vaccine controlling the infection in the absence of drugs. In one primate, the reduction in viral levels over pre-drug treatment and vaccination levels was 1000 times. In the other, the reductions in viral levels were 100 times.”
Based on the results, says the company’s news release, planning for a therapeutic trial in infected and drug treated humans has been initiated. The intent of therapeutic vaccination “is for the vaccine to "control" HIV virus levels in infected individuals to very low levels thus blocking the development of AIDS,” says GeoVax.
