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Moderna’s HIV vaccine has officially begun human trials

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Re: Moderna’s HIV vaccine has officially begun human trials

#41

Post by TameAntelope »

Pooge wrote: post #37

From my understanding, the effectiveness of the vaccine is measured by monitoring - in the real world - how many vaccinated people of a group catches the virus compared with how many unvaccinated did: how would it work in this case? I guess it would just take a lot of years to come up with a good approximation.

https://www.hiv.gov/hiv-basics/overview/data-and-trends/stat...

This info should give you a better idea of how one might compose a set of trial groups for something like this.

Re: Moderna’s HIV vaccine has officially begun human trials

#42

Post by sharikous »

gameswithgo wrote: post #9
rubyist5eva wrote: post #6

> We could be getting even closer to stopping the spread of HIV/AIDS. Not if it's anything like the Covid-19 vaccines that don't stop someone from contracting or spreading it.

The covid-19 vaccines were very effective at preventing disease and spread until the omicron mutation, which perhaps wouldn't have happened if not for vaccine hesitancy. (but that is an inevitable human nature thing, so you have to accept it and deal with) Fortunately the vaccines were still very effective at preventing death and hospitalization with omicron, I wonder how many lives were saved overall, so far? It is…

... and yet the HIV virus is notoriously terribly difficult to develop a vaccine against. It mutates easily and you don't have a natural antibody response that is easy to trigger. Like one of the top comments I really wish some expert would enter the discussion and explain what exactly are our expectations.

Re: Moderna’s HIV vaccine has officially begun human trials

#43

Post by solarkraft »

thesis wrote: post #11
rubyist5eva wrote: post #6

> We could be getting even closer to stopping the spread of HIV/AIDS. Not if it's anything like the Covid-19 vaccines that don't stop someone from contracting or spreading it.

Not sure why you’re being downvoted all much… well actually no it’s pretty obvious. I think you’re right though. The current Covid-19 vaccines are proven to lose efficacy over time. Will the same thing happen with this one as well? It’s a good question.

> well actually no it’s pretty obvious

If you think they're right you may not understand why the comment is being down voted.

> The current Covid-19 vaccines are proven to lose efficacy over time. Will the same thing happen with this one as well?

Like with any vaccine: Probably.

> It’s a good question

It's pretty besides the point. To recycle my car brakes analogy: They also lose efficacy over time, yet are widely considered to be useful.

Re: Moderna’s HIV vaccine has officially begun human trials

#44

Post by ipnon »

unnouinceput wrote: post #26

Quoted post unavailable.

It seems like HIV is mainly contracted by gay men in the First World, drug users in the Second World, and straight people in the Third World. It does seem a strange shoutout, but I imagine they are already prepping the ad campaigns for the West where they'll make the most money selling this vaccine.

Re: Moderna’s HIV vaccine has officially begun human trials

#45

Post by dmix »

helloworld wrote: post #16
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #10

As I understand it, the reason an HIV vaccine has been so difficult to create is that HIV mutates so easily. I understand the basics behind how mRNA vaccines are generated, but I don't understand why this approach would be expected to have any more success in evading the high mutation potential of HIV than other vaccine types. After all, it was even a concern with new coronavirus variants that the original Moderna va…

"Prof. William Schief explains how the novel #HIV #vaccine being tested in human clinical trials can trigger the right #Bcells of the immune system to achieve the much sought after broadly neutralizing #antibodies." https://twitter.com/scrippsresearch/status/13581208549709127...

Direct link to video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrmXpMmvHWw

This explains the background on broadly neutralizing antibodies that the other commenter `mlyle` mentions. Worth the watch.

Re: Moderna’s HIV vaccine has officially begun human trials

#46

Post by tamcap »

pokot0 wrote: post #23
gameswithgo wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The covid-19 vaccines were very effective at preventing disease and spread until the omicron mutation, which perhaps wouldn't have happened if not for vaccine hesitancy. (but that is an inevitable human nature thing, so you have to accept it and deal with) Fortunately the vaccines were still very effective at preventing death and hospitalization with omicron, I wonder how many lives were saved overall, so far? It is…

As much as I'd like to blame them, the number of people who willingly refused the vaccine are irrelevant compared to those who do not have access to it.

This is a valid point, but I think ignores amount of public health resources "spent" on trying to address vaccine hesitancy and healthcare resources addressing "unnecessary" hospitalization and complications.

Now imagine we could cut the above in half, and then use some fraction of those savings (as a nation) promoting wider adoption of vaccines globally. If we've reached higher levels of vaccination earlier (in the USA), more people without access to the vaccine currently would've been able to get it.

Re: Moderna’s HIV vaccine has officially begun human trials

#49

Post by tehjoker »

rubyist5eva wrote: post #6

> We could be getting even closer to stopping the spread of HIV/AIDS. Not if it's anything like the Covid-19 vaccines that don't stop someone from contracting or spreading it.

No one in this thread knows anything about vaccines or infectious disease. Each organism is different and requires a detailed understanding to see what the potential for the vaccine is. You can't just take COVID-19's performance and project that onto another disease. mRNA allows the targeting of specific proteins. The efficacy of the T-cell and B-cell responses are going to be highly dependent on that protein's structure, its importance and level of conservation in the pathogen, and other factors.

COVID-19 seems to require a persistently high level of neutralizing anti-bodies and the T-cell response seems to be less important (and also plays a role in auto-immunity). On the plus side, the wild-type vaccine has continued to be fairly effective against even highly mutated Omicron which is surprisingly good even if strategically, it is suboptimal that the virus has continued to mutate and evade the vaccine to ever greater degrees.

Re: Moderna’s HIV vaccine has officially begun human trials

#50

Post by ausudhz »

mlyle wrote: post #36
Vrondi wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Three things: - This isn't really the reason why mRNA is attractive here (see my other comment above). (Though, ability to iterate/try many protein combinations quickly in animal models was helpful). - Almost no drugs or treatments do we really know the long term picture of. Running studies in a way that lets you detect effects far later in life isn't practical. - When we're talking about treatments to prevent severe…

Not to mention the long term effects of COVID are known and way worst that what a vaccine can give you.

Vaccine are building an immune response, they're not drugs that try to cope the symptoms (eg. Panadol) and they are the safest drugs out there.

Is so interesting how people eat Panadol and many other drugs like candies (without reading the KNOWN side effects - which are also nasty), while they focus so much on things they know nothing about thinking that has mysterious "long term effects"

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