The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on Wednesday announced a 287-million-U.S.-dollar donation to help 165 researchers in 19 countries collaborate on an AIDS vaccine.

The commitment is the Gates Foundation's single largest investment in the area of AIDS research.

The funds will be evenly split between groups seeking to find antibodies that will neutralize HIV, and those researchers trying to find a way to revive cellular immunity.

Each of the 165 scientists who are getting money from the program had to agree to share their findings and compare results with others. Groups receiving funding must submit candidate vaccines for centralized testing and comparison.

The hope is to more definitively identify the most effective vaccine approaches and then direct future efforts toward those ideas, said Dr. Nicholas Hellmann, director of the Gates Foundation's HIV, TB and reproductive health program.

Some 42 million people around the world are believed to be infected with HIV and 3 million die each year, with sub-Saharan Africa the worst affected region.

Source: Xinhua