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Dr. Harriet Robinson, lead scientist and co-founder of GeoVax Labs, Inc., (OTC Bulletin Board: GOVX) an Atlanta-based biotechnology company developing HIV/AIDS vaccines, co-presented successful Phase I trial results at the 15th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI), February 5 in Boston. Dr. Robinson, a co-founder of the GeoVax HIV-1 AIDS vaccine technology, jointly presented the findings, entitled "GeoVax Clade B DNA/MVA HIV/AIDS Vaccine is Well Tolerated and Immunogenic when Administered to Healthy Seronegative Adults," with Dr. Bernard Moss of the U.S. National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and co-founder of the GeoVax vaccine. In the presentation, Robinson reported that a dose escalation study showed that a 1/10th dose and an anticipated normal dose of the GeoVax vaccine both elicit anti-viral CD4 and anti-viral CD8 T cells. However, the fuller dose elicited a higher number of antibody responders. For the normal dose, 77 percent of the participants had responding CD4 T cells; 42 percent had responding CD8 T cells, and 88 percent experienced an anti-Env antibody response. The vaccine was also found to be safe. Based on the excellent immune response rates and the GeoVax HIV/AIDS vaccine's ability to protect non human primates against AIDS development in pre-clinical challenge models, planning of a large Phase 2 trial is underway and tentatively scheduled for a mid-2008 start. As recently announced, due to the significant advances by GeoVax's HIV/AIDS vaccine development program, Dr. Robinson is joining the GeoVax management full time on February 15, 2008, as Vice President of Research and Development. By focusing her efforts exclusively at GeoVax, Dr. Robinson intends to speed up the vaccine development and human trial evaluation program required to meet FDA regulatory requirements and future vaccine commercialization efforts. Dr. Robinson stated, "Our AIDS vaccine efforts are rapidly moving forward to a new and exciting level and include plans for initiating Phase 2 human trials in 2008. It's important to me to be able to work full time with the GeoVax team to learn absolutely everything we can from our phase 2 trials so that we appropriately set the stage for phase 3 efficacy trials. I believe in the GeoVax vaccine and want to carry it forward as rapidly and as effectively as possible for worldwide use for the prevention of AIDS." The HIV Vaccine Trials Network (HVTN) in Seattle is testing GeoVax's HIV/AIDS vaccines. HVTN funded and supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), is the largest worldwide clinical trials program dedicated to the development and testing of HIV/AIDS vaccines. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the U.S. National Institute of Health funded pre-clinical work enabling the development of the clinical evaluation of GeoVax's DNA and MVA vaccines. The NIH recently provided additional support to GeoVax's vaccine development program in the form of a $15 million IPCAVD grant awarded in October 2007.
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