The COVID-19 pandemic lasted just over a year; the AIDS epidemic, on the other hand, now spans decades. Just as AIDS has claimed more than 670,000 lives in this country, scientists have long dreamed of a day when they could vaccinate the population against HIV, the virus that causes the deadly disease.
It seems that these two pandemics may be more related than anyone realized. And incredibly, some researchers believe that the same revolutionary technology used to create the Pfizer and Modern COVID-19 vaccines could be used for an HIV vaccine.
A vaccine developed by researchers from the nonprofit International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) and Scripps Research in San Diego has had a 97% success rate in stimulating the production of antibodies that largely neutralize rare part of the immune system is that which is effective at stimulating proteins on HIV. (The ear proteins are the needles that protrude from the HIV sphere like the spines on a sea urchin.) This development can be very significant in creating an HIV vaccine.
Historically, the problem with the creation of an HIV vaccine is largely due to the fact that HIV is a retrovirus, which means that it mutates easily to prevent antibodies from being thwarted, the proteins created by the immune system to kill foreign substances. identify and destroy threats.
But because the vein proteins of the HIV virus generally remain the same, even among different HIV strains, a vaccine that creates wider neutralizing antibodies can train them to target the needles – and in the process vaccinate people against HIV.
To be clear, technology is only at a very early stage. Researchers are still in phase I of clinical trials (this means that they start testing their technology first, and on a very small group of people, with the emphasis on making sure everything is safe). The initial test group included only 48 healthy adults, some of whom received a placebo. The enthusiasm stems from the fact that 97% of those who did not receive the placebo showed early evidence that their bodies were capable of producing these broad antibodies.
This is where the developments that led to the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines appear in the picture. Unlike conventional vaccines, which train the immune system to recognize a potential threat by injecting a weakened or dead version of the antigen (a foreign body that triggers an immune response) into a patient, Pfizer and Moderna have known as mRNA vaccines developed. These vaccines use synthetic versions of mRNA, a single-stranded RNA molecule that complements one of the DNA strands in a gene. The mRNA is then adapted, depending on the antigen that scientists want to fight, and injected into the body. It then exercises the body cells to produce proteins as in the antigen; when the cells infected by the mRNA release those proteins, the immune system recognizes them as threats and teaches them to recognize them.
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The candidate HIV vaccine studied in the Phase I clinical trials was not an mRNA vaccine. However, IAVI and Scripps are working with companies like Moderna to see if they can use mRNA vaccine technology to develop their own product faster and more efficiently.
“mRNA vaccines can help reduce the time it takes to develop and evaluate new candidates for HIV vaccine in clinical trials,” Mark Feinberg, MD, PhD, IAVI, emailed Salon. “While conventional approaches can take years to advance a promising idea in the laboratory to a vaccine candidate that can be tested in humans, mRNA vaccine technology can reduce the time from years to months.”
At least one prominent outside organization shares IAVI’s enthusiasm for mRNA vaccines. Mitchell Warren, executive director of the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition (AVAC), wrote to Salon that mRNA vaccines are promising precisely because they have been so effective in fighting SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
“It is important to note that the mRNA candidates were able to move rapidly in COVID-19 vaccine trials due to years of basic scientific research by HIV vaccine and other researchers,” Warren explained. “So it has exciting potential for an HIV vaccine, and it’s great to see how Moderna is investigating how to introduce an mRNA HIV vaccine into clinical research.”
Warren noted that there is a reservation. “One important question is whether there will be political and financial support for moving an mRNA-based HIV vaccine forward at the same rate as the COVID-19 vaccines are moving forward.”
Of course, a great deal of scientific and clinical work must be done before an HIV vaccine can become a reality. Vaccine development is a meticulous process and pharmaceutical companies must be very careful to make sure that they do not create a product that accidentally harms people.
“The results of the IAVI G001 trial are encouraging in that it confirms a promising new approach to HIV vaccine design,” Feinberg told Salon. “However, a lot of research will be needed to expand this approach so that we can achieve the goal of a broad effective HIV vaccine. We are working with partners, including the biotechnology company Moderna, to promote research as quickly as possible. “
Asked how optimistic he is about the prospects of the HIV vaccine, Feinberg wrote that ‘based on our recent results, and as future research to neutralize antibodies in general through neutralization, will continue to yield positive results, we believe that it will be possible to have an effective HIV vaccine. “
However, he warns that the challenge is so complex that ‘we do not anticipate that this goal will be achieved in the near future’, although he is optimistic that ‘we have a promising approach to pursue and new tools that enable us will propose to accelerate and optimize efforts to develop HIV vaccine. ‘
These views were reflected by Adrian B McDermott. Ph.D., Head of the Vaccine Immunology Program at the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and National Institutes of Health.
“We need to temper the enthusiasm seen with the initial results with the need for carefully controlled clinical trials and the accompanying experimental evaluations, such as G002,” McDermott emailed Salon. “We are embarking on a long journey of clinical experimental immunology that we hope will deliver robust and long-lasting antibody responses to HIV and, after a long time, deliver a safe and effective HIV vaccine.”
Warren expressed similar views.
“I remain optimistic that an HIV vaccine will eventually be safe and effective and be rolled out to those who need it, but it is impossible to give it a time frame,” Warren explained. “There is now one HIV vaccine (the J&J one) in efficacy studies, with the results expected in 2022, and another major proof of the concept study of another candidate in the field. All the others are further in a pipeline delayed by the vital focus on COVID-19 and by the limitations of the pandemic on clinical and laboratory research. “