It’s more than 40 Years Since First Case of AIDS was found and scientists have made huge strides in HIV treatment, transforming what was once a death sentence. But we still don’t have a vaccine that would train human immune systems to sloe down the infection before it ever takes root.
Many people than ever now have access to medications call antiretroviral therapy or ART which when taken as prescribed keeps down the amount of virus in their body which keeps them healthy and unable to transmit HIV to their partners.
People at high risk for HIV infection can now get pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, a pill taken every day that reduces the risk of infection by 99%.
Vaccines against Covid-19 were develop in record time and have shown remarkable levels of safety and efficacy.
Many of these shots were develop using technologies that were previously being try out on HIV so why haven’t we had successfull yet?
Covid vaccines work by eliciting antibodies that bind to the virus’ spike protein and stop it from infecting human cells.
HIV also has spike-shape proteins on its surface which are the target of HIV vaccine development.
Covid has tens of well known variants circulating worldwide, HIV has hundreds or thousands of variants inside each infected person.
Because it’s a “retrovirus” it quickly incorporates itself into its host’s DNA.
An effective vaccine will need to stop the infection dead in its tracks not just reduce the amount of virus and leave the remainder to stay with the person forever.
Efforts to develop a vaccine is going on for decades but ended in failure.
A study called Uhambo that was taking place in South Africa and involved the only vaccine candidate ever shown to provide some protection against the virus frustratingly ended in failure.
It’s also being test in around 3,800 men who have sex with men and transgender individuals across the US, South America and Europe in the Mosaico trial.
The J&J vaccine uses similar adenovirus technology to its Covid-19 vaccine in other words a genetically modified cold virus delivers genetic cargo carrying instructions for the host to develop “mosaic immunogens” molecules capable of inducing an immune response to a wide variety of HIV strains.
Also this is follow up by directly injecting synthetic proteins in later doses.
One more promising approach is to try to generate “broadly neutralizing antibodies” (bnAbs) which bind to areas of the HIV virus that are common across its many variants.
The International AIDS Vaccine Initiative and Scripps Research recently announced results from an early stage trial showing their mRNA vaccine candidate which develope with Moderna, stimulated the production of rare immune cells that create bnAbs.
Intended result trials are still a long way off but hopeful the mRNA technology which turn the body’s cells into vaccine factories and has proven its worth against Covid-19.
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