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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

#91

Post by f6v »

glial wrote: post #73
f6v wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think slowly will come the realization that mRNA vaccines aren’t as fast to develop as people thought. Sputnik/AstraZeneca vaccines were released almost at the same time as Moderna/Pfizer. Yes, the latter were first commercial mRNA vaccines, but the technology is nevertheless rather mature. I watched a lecture by the people credited with creating mRNA vaccines and it turns out people have been working on the techno…

> Rather, there would be delta- and omicron-specific vaccine. I think there are -- they just haven't made it through the trials and approval processes yet. These are press releases from Pfizer for whatever it's worth: Omicron: https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-deta... Mentions delta: https://cdn.pfizer.com/pfizercom/2021-07/Delta_Variant_Study...

Yes, but what I meant was those would be already approved.

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

#92

Post by meepmorp »

abeppu wrote: post #12

I'm a bit confused by the timing of this. Here's a press release from only a couple months ago, in which a Moderna partnership on an mRNA vaccine showed some benefit in macaques, but mostly in delaying infection (i.e. most macaques in the treatment group still got SHIV). Only two of seven in the treatment group actually remained uninfected. It sounded like researches wanted to refine and validate their protocol befor…

2 out of 7 macaques didn't get infected after 13 weekly (anally administered) exposures to SHIV. The other 5 averaged 8 exposures before infection took place vs 3 exposures in the control group.

That's actually pretty good at preventing infection - 28.5% avoided infection completely, with the remainder clearly having a much more robust immunity than control.

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

#93

Post by arcticbull »

epgui wrote: post #59
ausudhz wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 thin…

Exactly this. I would rather take the "most unsafe" vaccine of the last 30 years than take an Advil. (I am a biochemist)

The one that really surprises me that people take like candy is Tylenol/Panadol/Paracetamol/Acetaminophen. It's the leading cause of acute liver failure in the US. Among common OTCs, its active dose is I believe the closest to its lethal dose. Just 2-3X the recommended daily upper limit can cause liver damage, and when taken around alcohol, the toxicity is dramatically higher.

I strongly doubt that Acetaminophen would be approved as an OTC drug if proposed today.

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

#94

Post by vkou »

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…

> 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.

I'm happy to piss in the coffee of vaccine hesitants any day of the week (point me to the mug), but we can't blame the variants on vaccine hesitancy.

Both delta and omicron originated in unvaccinated populations in the developing world, where the problem is not vaccine hesitancy [1], but the lack of availability of vaccines [2].

[1] Delta arose before any vaccines were approved, and yes, of course, there's vaccine hesitancy in South Africa, but there's also, simply put, not enough vaccines to go around.

[2] For some mysterious reason, our economic planners thought that getting the developed world inoculated in 2021, and the developing world in 2022 was a smart plan. It wasn't, but now we're reaping the consequences of it. I eagerly await the next variant.

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

#95

Post by gitfan86 »

hatware wrote: post #77

Quoted post unavailable.

I don't follow your logic. Because Fauci, Trump, Biden said things that turned out to be false, new medicines can no longer be created?

Or are you saying that new medicines can still be created, but you will not take them out of spite toward the lies told during the pandemic?

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

#97

Post by Unklejoe »

8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote: post #70

I wonder if we'll see HSV also addressed by this new wave of mRNA vaccines, or if it's just not top of mind for companies and researchers due to its "mostly benign" nature. At least until one's immune system starts to weaken with advanced age and it starts to cause all sorts of problems, but perhaps by then it gets swept under the "problems of aging" rug.

Dr. Friedman and team at UPenn are working on exactly this. An mRNA based prophylactic (and also potentially therapeutic) vaccine for HSV. I think they were originally using some other form of vaccine (a protein vaccine?), but then realized that mRNA was a lot better. He has posted a few video updates on the progress, and it looks good, but of course it hasn't entered phase 1 yet (supposed to start this year).

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

#98

Post by ifyoubuildit »

tylerhou wrote: post #60
Vrondi wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Knowing long-term effects (1+ years) is not a precondition of approval for most vaccines. It just so happens that vaccines usually take a long time for approval, so we end up knowing long-term effects as a side effect. This is because there generally isn't a known mechanism for vaccines to have long term effects. Not ruling out the possibility, but we understand how vaccines work pretty well. Also, most vaccines are…

> This is because there generally isn't a known mechanism for vaccines to have long term effects.

I know a lot of people believe this, but as a developer who regularly deploys code to production, this mindset blows me away.

I'm not saying that being a developer means I know anything about this. I'm well aware of my (our? I don't know what you do) peoples habit of thinking being good at our craft means we're also somehow suddenly good at others.

But if I told someone that I don't need to know the effects of v7.1.3 before patching it because I can't think of a mechanism for it going wrong, and besides, we already released all those other versions and they were fine, I'd hopefully be fired.

I get it, software and medicine are different things, and some things just aren't practical in meat space, but the mindset around testing is something that I think will always be difficult for me to understand after being in this occupation for so long.

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

#99

Post by f6v »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #81
f6v wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think slowly will come the realization that mRNA vaccines aren’t as fast to develop as people thought. Sputnik/AstraZeneca vaccines were released almost at the same time as Moderna/Pfizer. Yes, the latter were first commercial mRNA vaccines, but the technology is nevertheless rather mature. I watched a lecture by the people credited with creating mRNA vaccines and it turns out people have been working on the techno…

> Sputnik/AstraZeneca vaccines were released almost at the same time as Moderna/Pfizer Most of the time and cost is associated with the trials - not the actual development AFAIK. What would be more promising is if MRNA proves to be much more likely to pass trials. I think we need a lot more attempts at different viruses to have an idea here. Certainly - if this HIV vaccine /does/ work - that's a huge win for MRNA. >…

> The traditional vaccines don't work any better.

Didn’t say they were. Rather that mRNA don’t seem to be approved faster for the new variants.

> This is evidence MRNA is better than traditional vaccines.

Haven’t been following the field that closely. I only seen one pre-print(probably Hungary?) where Sputnik was on par. Would love to see data if you’re willing to share.

Edit: I admit I’m a bit confused since I mixed “traditional vaccines” and Sputnik/AZ together. The latter aren’t traditional since adenovirus-based vaccines haven’t been previously deployed, same as mRNA vaccines.

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

#100

Post by arcticbull »

f6v wrote: post #63
emiliobumachar wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I definitely don't have any knowledge on the topic. Here are my crackpot opinions: 1) Maybe many or most infected have a single strain each, and a targeted vaccine to each's strain could work as a treatment, similarly to the tetanus and rabies vaccines. Even if not a full cure, could be a way to halt the disease progression with lower cost and side effects than the current treatments available. 2) HIV spreads relativ…

Regarding your second point, isn’t HIV a preventable disease? In the areas where the prevalence is in double digits, people don’t seem to be using condoms or taking other precautions. Why would they be taking vaccine every year?

It's a lot easier to get folks to agree to one or two shots one time than to convince them to change their sexual practices, one would imagine.
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