by Xinhua writer Ren Haijun WASHINGTON, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Health scientists have made significant advances toward AIDS prevention over the last several years, though it's difficult to predict when we can overcome the deadly disease, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) told Xinhua recently in an exclusive interview. Fauci just came back from the 18th International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2010), which he described as 'one of the better conference we had over the last several years.' AIDS 2010, held in Vienna, Austria, is the platform for those working in the field of HIV, as well as policy makers, persons living with HIV and other individuals committed to ending the pandemic to exchange their views on the current situation of global HIV prevention and treatment, new research in this field and recent scientific developments. Fauci said there were some 'very important good scientific advances' that were discussed during the conference and probably, the most striking of which was the success of the study that was done in South Africa on topical microbicides for the prevention of HIV infection in women. Scientists confirmed during the conference that a vaginal gel could greatly protect women from getting HIV from an infected partner. According to the study conducted by the Center for the AIDS Program of Research in South Africa, the gel contains the effective anti-HIV drug tenofovir and could reduce the risk of infection by 39 percent if women use the vaginal gelatin before or within 12 hours after sexual intercourse. 'That was really one of the most important advances that we had in the last few years,' Fauci said, who is an immunologist that has made substantial contributions to research in the areas of AIDS and other immunodeficiencies, both as a scientist and as the head of NIAID. Besides, Fauci said, two other key events have taken place in the past few years that led to significant advances in the development of a vaccine. A safe and effective HIV preventive vaccine is the best long-term hope to bring the HIV/AIDS epidemic under control. The first is the 16,000-person trial that took place in Thailand, which showed that a particular vaccine candidate gave a 31 percent efficacy against the acquisition of HIV, according to Fauci. 'That's the first vaccine trial since we have been doing vaccine trial, which has been for over 20 years, that has shown any indication of efficacy at all.' The other important event was the identification of a group of antibodies in individuals who have very good control of their HIV infection, Fauci said. Those antibodies were made in what's called monoclonal antibodies and what they did is that they identified a part of the virus, which is with a binds to the target cell. They can neutralize or block 90 percent or more of all of the HIV isolates that have been identified. 'That will then be used as the immunogen to develop a vaccine,' Fauci said. 'So we've developed binding antibodies which bind to the part of the virus that's called the CD4 binding site. That will be a clue or a direction towards making the vaccine that will actually develop the antibodies.' Fauci said there are several aspects to contain HIV but we need to mostly concentrate on preventing new infections. 'Importantly, we need to prevent new infections,' Fauci said. ' And there are several ways to do that, like topical microbicides, needle exchange programs, the use of condoms.' 