Microsoft tycoon gives £143m to fund HIV vaccine research

MICROSOFT founder Bill Gates is to give £143 million to help speed up development of a vaccine against HIV and Aids.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will award the cash in grants over the next five years to create an international network of scientists to work on the project.

Dr Nicholas Hellmann, acting director of the Gates Foundation's HIV, TB and reproductive health programme, acknowledged that an effective vaccine may still be 10 years away.

He said: "Unfortunately, developing an effective HIV vaccine has proven to be tremendously difficult, and despite the committed efforts of many researchers around the world, progress simply has not been fast enough."

Each of the 165 investigators in 19 countries who will get money in the series of grants had to agree to share their findings in real time. They must also compare their results with others - even if they had been working on competing projects in the past.