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The company has begun human trials of its HIV vaccine, with the recent development of the COVID-19 vaccine generating real hopes of defeating other viral diseases.
It is by means of a press release that the American biotechnology company Moderna and the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative organization announced the start of the first vaccine trials against HIV in humans.
Phase 1 trial conducted on healthy volunteers
Conducted at four sites in the United States, this phase 1 trial will be conducted on 56 healthy men, all of whom will be HIV-negative. The test will go like this:48 participants will receive one or two doses of mRNA-1644, of which 32 will receive the mRNA-1644v2-Core boost. Eight other volunteers will receive the stimulation immunogen alone” details the press release.
Furthermore, “participants’ immune responses to vaccine candidates will be examined in detail to assess whether targeted responses have been obtained and participants will be clinically followed for six months after the last vaccination.”.
The hope of messenger RNA
The rapid development of the vaccine against Covid-19, based on messenger RNA, has raised the hope of researchers for the treatment of the various viral pathologies existing throughout the world, in particular AIDS. They have developed this new vaccine against HIV, the aim of which is to stimulate the production of antibodies, called bnAbs, to counter the different variants of HIV, the virus causing AIDS.
The role of the vaccine, via messenger RNA technology, would be to train B lymphocytes to produce these antibodies, so that the immune system can fight the virus. “The production of bnAbs is widely considered a goal of HIV vaccination, and this is a first step in this process.“, underlined the press release.
680,000 deaths worldwide
According to David Diemert, scientific manager of the trial at one of the four sites where it is carried out: “Other immunogens will be needed to guide the immune system on (the right) path, but this combination of boost and boost could be the first key element of a possible HIV vaccine regimen.”.
Researchers have been trying to develop this vaccine against HIV for more than forty years, without success. Recall that in 2020, according to UNAIDS, the world had 37.7 million people living with the virus, 1.5 million people newly infected, and 680,000 people who died of AIDS-related illnesses.