Aids vaccine 'ready in five years'

An Aids vaccine could be ready within five years, the International Aids Conference in Barcelona was due to hear today.

The American company VaxGen is to tell the conference organised by the United Nations agency UNAids that its vaccine could be in use in five years rather than the 10 years previously thought, the BBC reported today.

The Vaxgen vaccine is one of only eight being tested on humans to a "significant degree", the BBC said, and the only one in an end-stage trial.

Results from the trial should be ready early next year, the company was expected to tell the conference in the Spanish city.

For a licence to be granted a licence they will have to show the vaccine is effective in at least a third of patients.