The Aids Vaccine Discovery laboratory, according to the country’s local paper - Sunday Times - the laboratory is part of a network across countries where samples of recently transmitted strains of the virus are collected. It is based at the University of Stellenbosch’s Virology Department in Cape Town.

Head of the local project Corena de Beer said: “We will collect infected blood samples, take out the T-cells which contain the virus, freeze and send them to a repository… in Germany.”

She added that members of the consortium had different roles varying from finding a vaccine for the disease to collecting blood specimens. She further said that they have partners in the University of Washington, the University of Lund in Sweden, Italy and Geneva.

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De Beer said it was important to keep samples as the virus mutated rapidly. The Collaboration for AIDS Vaccine Discovery (CAVD) is an international network of 13 Vaccine Discovery Consortia (VDCs) and five Central Service Facilities (CSFs) applying new technologies, concepts and approaches to the design of safe and effective preventive vaccines against HIV/AIDS.

This collaborative effort was established in July 2006 and now includes 18 grants totaling $327 million over five years, with additional co-funding provided by the Fraunhofer Society and the Ministry of Economic Affairs of Saarland in Germany, and the Swiss State Secretariat of Education and Research.