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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

#141

Post by macilacilove »

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…

> As I understand it, the reason an HIV vaccine has been so difficult to create is that HIV mutates so easily.

Nope. There are exactly two species of HIV since at least the '80s. HIV-1 and HIV-2. HIV however can trick the immune system into creating non-neutralizing antibodies, that can't fully prevent the progression of the infection.

If you run a large pharma company you probably already make a lot of money from long-term HIV/AIDS treatment. From the CEO's perspective developing a HIV vaccine may shrink the antiretroviral market if at-risk groups vaccinate themselves. Therefore you prioritize more lucrative projects.

HIV vaccine makes sense if: 1. You can hope for a general mandate of your product, or: 2. You are a small pharma company looking to make a name for yourselves.

Regarding the benefit of mRNA vaccines over non-mRNA vaccines for HIV, I don't know. I have yet to learn if there is significant medical benefit to mRNA other than reduced cost and TTM.

AFAIK mRNA does not enable producing new types of proteins, only this time they are produced by your body, right?

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

#142

Post by driverdan »

mpalczewski wrote: post #122
spamizbad wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One reason is that mRNA vaccines can be developed much faster than traditional vaccines. So the idea is you have a better chance of "outrunning" a strain.

We get a new flu vaccine every year, is this much different?

Yes. It takes a long time to generate the flu vaccine. The strains need to be selected long before the season starts so it's a bit of guess work. That's why effectiveness varies from year to year. mRNA vaccines can be produced in high volumes much faster than traditional vaccines. It would allow the flu vaccine strains to be selected at a better time.

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

#143

Post by lhoff »

f6v wrote: post #91
glial wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I assume that still has something to do with mRNA being a novel vaccine type. Therefore the regulatory bodies are still carefull. If Moderna, Biontech and other potential players show again and again that there process of developing new vaccines is safe, I'd guess the time to market will getting shorter and shorter.

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

#144

Post by newsbinator »

hatware wrote: post #111
spywaregorilla wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be happy if they cured cancer.

Quoted post unavailable.

Money aside, 1/3rd to 1/2 of their family members (and themselves) would then stop dying of cancer.

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

#145

Post by joshuamorton »

ifyoubuildit wrote: post #98
tylerhou wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 some…

> 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.

But this isn't what they're saying. They're saying that there are few to no ways for it to not have any detectable issues for 6 months and then suddenly go wrong (which I'll note is also true for software!). Canarying and staged rollouts are a good idea in software, as they are in medicine. But much like you don't think its necessary to canary v7.1.3 for a year, just in case it has a bug that makes it shut down suddenly after 200 days, its probably not necessary to wait a year to see if a vaccine causes sudden acute liver failure after 7 months, because there just isn't a biological mechanism for it to do that (the vaccine is already out of your body by that point!).

And to the extend that such issues are possible (leap days can do weird stuff), we can look specifically for those mechanisms (like say monitoring for stuff that would lead to liver damage in the weeks after vaccination).

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

#146

Post by somesanityplz »

khazhoux wrote: post #137
hnarn wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea what you’re trying to say.

Sadly, given that it's a new (throwaway?) account used to post in a thread about a vaccine, there's a high chance this is another neo-anti-vaxxer, here to tell us why this is "not a vaccine" and all that.

I am just making a couple of considerations about you, audience, considering I silently read what you comment for years already. This is not a throwaway account. I just felt the need to express my opinion, if you are sad about that, and the only way to answer me is to label me as a "neo-anti-vaxer" you are just demonstrating my point.

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

#148

Post by Ekaros »

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.

I would be really worried with false sense of security when dealing with HIV/AIDS... Covid in the end is a mild thing, same can't really be said about HIV/AIDS. And if the protection is only temporary and partially it might be worse than having nothing at all if it leads to lot more risk taking.

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

#149

Post by thebradbain »

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.

HIV doesn’t mutate in the same way a disease like Covid does, at least not at the same speed— also, PrEP has existed for years. It’s still proven to be effective protection against contracting HIV even if directly exposed (though it’s a pill that must be taken every day rather than a vaccine).

I honestly don’t know why everyone who is sexually active isn’t on PrEP (the federal government even mandates it be free to those without insurance in most cases)— it should be as common practice as wearing a condom and birth control, yet its existence isn’t even known to many people (especially among straight people).

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

#150

Post by LeanderK »

f6v wrote: post #91
glial wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

you can't do this since you need studies and those take time. Depending in the size of your cohort and the current viral load in the population. Curevacs study had the problem that during this time in germany the corona-virus wasn't that common so nobody knew whether the vaccine is working.

As I understood it, the actual vaccine was developed super quickly and then everybody waited for the results of the study.

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