India Makes Progress With AIDS Vaccine

A second Phase I AIDS vaccine clinical trial in India was successfully completed, the Indian Council of Medical Research, the National AIDS Control Organization and the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative announced. The results of the trial of an MVA-based AIDS vaccine candidate (TBC-M4), which was conducted in Chennai, indicated that the vaccine candidate had acceptable levels of safety and was well tolerated.

The proportion of volunteers whose immune systems responded to the vaccine candidate suggests the candidate holds promise. The trial was done using two doses of the candidate vaccine. After three injections, 82 percent of the volunteers who received a low dose and 100 percent of those who received a high dose registered immune responses to the vaccine. The 100 percent response rate is greater than that seen with the majority of AIDS vaccine candidates tested in humans to date. However the strength and diversity of these immune responses were modest. It may be possible to boost the immune response, if this vaccine is used in combination with other candidate AIDS vaccines.

Get the full report from iavi.org.

The Latest Trend in Bollywood is Going Gay

A lot of taboos are being broken in Bollywood today. Kissing on screen is no longer frowned upon. Protagonists actually have grey shades. Having live-in relationships and pre-marital sex is no longer the preserve of villains.

For years the word gay was all but banned in the oh-so-straight world of Bollywood, where heroes were always blue-blooded heterosexuals, with a harem of girls at their feet while heroines had eyes only for the opposite sex.

It is perhaps a reflection of the way in which Indian society has become more open that even Bollywood is now being inclusive.

The new Abhishek Bachchan-John Abraham film “Dostana” shows the two protagonists pretending to be gay, complete with a dance sequence in the moonlight.

Read the rest at blogs.reuters.com.