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Barney S. Graham, John R. Mascola, Lessons from Failure—Preparing for Future HIV-1 Vaccine Efficacy Trials, The Journal of Infectious Diseases, Volume 191, Issue 5, 1 March 2005, Pages 647–649, https://doi.org/10.1086/428406
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Two articles [1, 2] in the current issue of the Journal of Infectious Diseases report the analysis of the first phase 3 efficacy trial of a candidate HIV-1 vaccine. The trial was successfully conducted and showed that the vaccine did not prevent HIV-1 infection. This vaccine, which was composed of recombinant gp120 (rgp120) in alum, was the culmination of testing >1 dozen monomeric envelope glycoprotein subunit constructs that represented the first generation of HIV-1 candidate vaccines. In the mid-1980s, fresh from the success of the recombinant subunit surface-protein vaccine for hepatitis B virus, it was thought that production of a recombinant construct of the HIV-1 envelope glycoprotein would result in an effective HIV-1 vaccine. The rgp120 used in the vaccine tested in the first phase 3 trial was made in mammalian cells, was properly glycosylated, and was the most immunogenic of its era. However, by the time the efficacy trial started, it was known that this type of envelope immunogen induced a type-specific immune response, meaning that the antibody elicited could only neutralize strains of virus that were very similar to the one from which the envelope sequence was originally derived
