Singapore: With no cure or vaccine available for AIDS, that is spreading across the globe like a wide epidemic, billionaire philanthropist Mr Bill Gates, who spends millions of dollars on AIDS drug development, said that he hopes for a vaccine against the disease within the next five to 10 years, even as a cure is still elusive.

In a recently held concert at Paris, Mr Gates said that a vaccine can stop the epidemic.As per UN estimates, so far nearly thirty-nine million people have died, while about 35 million are living with the immune system-destroying virus today, overwhelmingly in poor countries.

"A vaccine, that's a big area of funding for our foundation, but even in the best case that's five years away, perhaps as long as 10," he said. In the next 15 years, he hopes vaccines would have eradicated polio, and stopped the spread of HIV and malaria.

The search for a vaccine has been one of the most frustrating chapters of the AIDS saga. Traditional antibody-based vaccine candidates have failed to put up more than a partial shield, partly because of virus mutations.