The money was awarded to the university's Institute of Human Virology, headed by Dr. Robert Gallo, who helped discover the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS, and developed the HIV blood test. The funding was announced Thursday at the institute.
Scientists at the IHV began research on the AIDS vaccine in 2002 and have seen major breakthroughs on tests using monkeys.
The vaccine being researched would neutralize many different strains of HIV. The researchers say previous vaccine candidates responded only to single strains or narrow ranges of the disease.
Scientists have long been frustrated by the AIDS virus' ability to mutate. The virus constantly changes the makeup of the proteins on its surface, making it hard for antibodies to attack the disease. Vaccines developed to battle the disease have proved too weak to meet the task.
The IHV vaccine contains a protein that is normally hidden within the AIDS virus but exposes itself when the virus attaches to a cell before attacking it. The protein doesn't change, unlike the proteins on the outer coat of the virus.
The antibodies in the trial vaccine bind to regions common in HIV rather than to the ever-changing protein that may differ in each virus strain.
"Today, we are on the verge on a major breakthrough in HIV/AIDS," said Gov. Martin O'Malley, who announced the grants.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has donated $16.8 million to the research, while the Army's Military HIV Research Program has given $2.2 million. The National Institutes of Health and others also have contributed funds. The foundation also awarded the IHV $15 million in 2007 to go toward developing the HIV/AIDS vaccine.
A spokesman for the Gates Foundation was not available for comment. To date, the foundation has committed $2.2 billion in grants to HIV/AIDS research, according to a fact sheet provided by the company.
Col. Peter Weina, deputy commander of the Military HIV Research Program, said it decided to partner with the IHV because its current findings seemed promising.
"No one institution is able to do everything well, but by collaborating we can develop the synergies to make a breakthrough we might not be able to do by ourselves," Weina said after Thursday's announcement.
Gallo and scientists at the IHV will conduct the research along with researchers from the Military HIV Program and Sanofi Pasteur, a drug company that specializes in distributing and developing vaccines.
Part of the research will involve testing the vaccine created by IHV scientists to see how it works with a different vaccine tested by Sanofi Pasteur and the Military HIV Research Program in Thailand. That vaccine reduced risk of infection by about a third.
"We thought we might couple them and make theirs work better and help ours as well," Gallo said.
The researchers will also look at how long the vaccine will last in humans. Gallo said it would be hard to provide vaccine boosts to people in Third World countries several times a year.
The money will enable the IHV to move from preclinical work to Phase I and II clinical trials that would include humans.
Initial testing of the vaccine was done by Profectus BioSciences, a Baltimore-based spinoff of the institute which Gallo said will continue to do more testing with the new funding.
Researchers have said they're closer than they have ever been to developing a vaccine.
Medications now enable people living with AIDS to manage the disease and survive for many years. But the drugs are expensive and don't cure people. People with HIV also have a much higher risk of developing certain cancers, such as those of the lung, liver, head and neck.
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