The biotechnology company Moderna is preparing to start human trials of the HIV vaccine as early as Wednesday, using the same mRNA platform as the company’s COVID-19 vaccine.
An entry published in the National Institutes of Health Clinical Trials Registry on Wednesday shows that these trials are expected to begin on August 19 and should be completed in the spring of 2023.
Moderna has two HIV candidate vaccines, mRNA-1644 and mRNA-1644v2-Core, both of which have passed preliminary safety tests before being first used in humans. The randomized trial will include 56 HIV-negative participants between the ages of 18 and 56.
HIV is one of several viruses that Moderna uses the mRNA platform to develop vaccines. The Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines are the first mRNA vaccines ever approved for human use in the United States, although the technology has been developed for decades and has matured with the emergence of a pandemic.
Attempts to develop an HIV vaccine have been going on for decades, but with little success. Although a variety of candidate vaccines have entered the experimental stage, not all candidate vaccines have been proven to be safe, and almost none of them have shown even moderate effectiveness.
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Probably the most effective vaccine candidate, a vaccine that was tested in Thailand in the 2000s, was found to reduce infections by about 30%, although some scientists believe that the test results are controversial.
In the same decade, scientists were forced to cancel the trial of another vaccine candidate when it was discovered that the vaccine may actually increase the risk of HIV infection, rather than prevent infection.
Unlike Moderna vaccine candidates, none of the previous HIV vaccine candidates were developed using mRNA. Since the mRNA platform provides a new method and has been proven to be safe and effective against COVID-19, scientists hope that it will lead to an HIV breakthrough.
In addition, due to the nature of HIV, mRNA technology may have some clear advantages over more traditional methods-this virus has rapidly mutated into many different variants for decades.
“The mRNA platform makes it easy to develop vaccines against mutations because it only needs to update the coding sequence in the mRNA that encodes the mutation,” said Dr. Rajesh Gandhi, chairman of the HIV Medical Association and an infectious disease expert.
“Based on its success in preventing COVID-19, I hope that mRNA technology will completely change our ability to develop vaccines against other pathogens such as HIV and influenza,” Gandhi added.
Several other companies are also working on HIV vaccines. Some candidates are currently or about to enter clinical trials. Other vaccines have been developed using a variety of methods, including technology used in a partially successful Thai trial.
Weekly newspaper Contact Moderna for comments.
