According to a top US AIDS scientist, research is about to go back to laboratory basics, following setbacks in the search for an elusive vaccine.

Dr Anthony S Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and his colleagues announced the turnabout in an article in the magazine Science.

Fauci says that his federally funded institute, which distributes about 80 percent of the money spent worldwide on vaccine research, will "rev up the burners" to tackle the decades-old puzzle of how to create antibodies against the disease without causing an actual infection.