Melbourne's Virax Holdings has received approval from the South African Medicines Control Council to begin early stage trials of its HIV therapeutic vaccine.

The trial will cost over $6 million and will be funded by a consortium of global and African mining companies, including BHP Billiton. The vaccine is aimed at people already infected by HIV.

The trial involves Virax's Co-X-Gene technology, which is designed to co-express genes inside the cell. Genes are delivered by a fowlpox virus vector to express specific antigens and cytokines.

VIR201 has been tested in two early stage trials in Australia, both successful in suppressing virus levels, and has an open IND through the US FDA for a phase II clinical trial.

The Co-X-Gene technology has been licensed to French company Transgene, which is conducting a Phase IIa trial for its therapeutic cancer vaccine TG4010 as an adjunct to chemotherapy in patients with advanced lung cancer.