A professor has launched a major new research project as part of the search for an Aids vaccine.

Prof Andrew McMichael, from the Medical Research Council's Human Immunology Unit at Oxford University, is leading the new initiative. It marks the start of the first serious attempt to develop vaccines against strains of the HIV virus that are rife in the developing world.

Experts see a vaccine as the only hope of halting the Aids epidemic in Africa, South America and Asia, where 90 per cent of the 16,000 people infected with the disease every day live.

After 17 years of the Aids virus, only one trial has been undertaken to test the efficiency of a vaccine, and that was in the United States. Such a vaccine would be useless in the developing world because it would not work on the strains of the virus present in the Third World.

The research project involves a partnership between the UK and Kenya. Prof McMichael and colleagues from the University of Nairobi are pinning their hopes on developing a vaccine by making use of a type of white blood cell, known as T-cells. T-cells destroy other virus infected cells. Professor McMichael's team is looking for a way to gear up these cells to fight HIV before infection occurs.

This year alone, 5.8 million people have been infected with HIV, and half of all new cases were people aged 15-24.

Prof Michael Adler, chairman of the National Aids Trust, said: "The fact that 5.8 million people have been infected represents a major failure for all of us.

"It means we have to add things to our capability of controlling this epidemic. That is why the development of a vaccine is so crucial."

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