Oxford University has been selected to recieve $26.4m (£14.5m) from the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health to fund research into malaria, AIDS and tuberculosis. The research is part of the Grand Challenges initiative, a major international effort to achieve scientific breakthroughs against the world’s most deadly and widespread diseases. Professor Adrian Hill, whose team has research units in Kenya, Gambia and South Africa, was cautiously optimistic about the development of a vaccine against HIV within the next ten years, but stressed that the initial vaccines may just act to slow down the disease.
