What is the Step Study?
The Step Study is the name of a clinical trial to test a potential HIV vaccine. The trial will be run by a pharmaceutical company and by the HIV Vaccine Trials Network (HVTN) as well as AIDS Research Alliance. The main purposes of this trial are to obtain more information about the safety of the study vaccine and to learn if the study vaccine can prevent HIV infection. For vaccine recipients who become HIV-infected through high-risk behavior, the trial will test whether the study vaccine lowers the level of HIV in their blood. The products in this trial are not produced from live virus or from HIV-infected human cells. There is no possibility that they contain live (or killed) HIV virus. The experimental vaccine in this trial cannot cause HIV infection.
