Despite four decades of research, doctors have yet to develop a vaccine to protect people from the virus that causes AIDS, which kills hundreds of thousands of people around the world each year.
Testing in humans of an HIV vaccine that uses messenger RNA technology has begun, the biotech firm Moderna and the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative said Thursday. This Phase 1 trial is being carried out in the United States among 56 healthy adults who are HIV negative. Despite four decades of research, doctors have yet to develop a vaccine to protect people from the virus that causes AIDS, which kills hundreds of thousands of people around the world each year. But hopes have been stirred with the success of mRNA technology, which allowed for the development of Covid-19 vaccines in record time, including one from Moderna. The goal of the vaccine now being tested is to stimulate production of a kind of antibody called "broadly neutralizing antibodies," or bnAbs, which can act against the many variants of HIV that are circulating today. The vaccine is supposed to teach B lymphocytes, which are part of the immune system, to generate these antibodies. In this trial, participants are injected with an immunogen -- a substance that can trigger an immune response -- and then a booster immunogen later. These substances will be delivered with mRNA technology. "The induction of bnAbs is widely considered to be a goal of HIV vaccination, and this is the first step in that process," Moderna and the IAVI, a research organization, said in a statement. Read more...
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