AIDS vaccine testing continues in Phila.

Let's talk about sex. Found on flyers in dining halls throughout campus, this phrase is the theme of the advertising campaign for PhiladelphiaFIGHT, a local branch of a national group testing a new experimental HIV vaccination. Philadelphia is one of 36 cities across the United States looking for volunteers to test AIDSVAX, the first-ever preventative HIV vaccination to reach the third phase of the trial period, according to Alvy Holloway, a clinical research associate at PhiladelphiaFIGHT. "Preliminary research on [this vaccination] is extremely promising," Holloway said. "[This is the] first vaccination to make it this far in research." PhiladelphiaFIGHT is one of 50 sites across the country that are participating in this study. Sponsored nationally by the San Francisco-based VaxGen company, PhiladelphiaFIGHT hopes to find an "answer as to whether or not AIDSVAX is effective protection against HIV transmission," by injecting volunteers with the experimental vaccine, VaxGen spokesperson Nicole Lynch said. And PhiladelphiaFIGHT was the first clinic to participate in this experiment, injecting the first patient with the vaccination on June 23 of last year. As of last Thursday, the organization had 70 of the 150 volunteers they are searching for. The local volunteers are one segment of the 5,000 volunteers participating nationwide in the study. PhiladelphiaFIGHT is searching for gay men with multiple partners and heterosexual women at risk for HIV -- those whose male partners are HIV-positive -- as volunteers to be injected with the experimental vaccine. The vaccine consists of seven injections and clinical visits for 36 months. In addition to the vaccine, volunteers are required to attend "risk reduction counseling," according to Melanie Smerkanich, the study coordinator at PhiladelphiaFIGHT. Part of PhiladelphiaFIGHT's campaign is aimed at college students because "no one has more sex than people in college," Holloway said. "Think about how the world would be different if you could be vaccinated against HIV," Holloway said. "Sex as we know it will no longer be the same." AIDSVAX is made from glycoprotein-120, the part of the outer surface of HIV which binds to T-receptor cells in the body, allowing the virus to penetrate and infect the cell, Smerkanich explained. The study also includes a placebo test case. There is a one in three chance that volunteers will receive a placebo vaccine -- an inactive substance that is used as a control in medical experiments to determine the effectiveness of a drug -- making the study "double-blinded," according to Lynch. At the end of the test period, Lynch continued, the codes will be broken and the HIV infection and recovery rates of the two groups -- actual test cases and placebos -- will be compared to determine the vaccine's effectiveness.