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Moderna’s HIV vaccine has officially begun human trials

them.us

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

#221

Quoted post unavailable.

The same guy believes in homeopathy and that DNA can teleport via radio waves into a sample of pure water. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_teleportation

It's a whole thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_disease

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

#222
post #63

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?

The vaccine wouldn't mess with sexual pleasure, something that hampers adoption of condoms. While condoms transmit pressure sensation just fine, the shearing sensation is diminished. Older men with mild ED may lose erection in the interval necessary to apply a condom. I believe there is space to disruptive innovation in the condom market.

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

#223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't know this. Could you explain the reason?

Presumably the viral load required for transmission is greater than the viral load required for detection.

My guess is it is more of a probabilistic thing than a strict threshold.

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

#224
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine and Sputnik are using a pretty similar trick that gives them the speed-up. They still get to pick an arbitrary sequence, but they're smuggling it inside a virus instead of as mRNA. That's why the codename for the AstraZeneca vaccine is ChAdOx1, it's a Chimp Adenovirus as host for the sequence. Take this mild uninteresting chimpanzee virus, but tweak it to tell human cells to produc…

> and maybe to Chimp Adenoviruses Which is a major problem with this technique. One of the other vaccines (J&J?) used a relatively harmless human virus and as I recall, some people with previous exposure had no effect from the vaccine.

Likewise, it would seem that after one vaccine using a given vector, completely unrelated vaccines using the same vector would be ineffective? So presumably they would eventually run out of all the accessible vectors.

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

#225

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.

You are missing the point. If someone told you they are worried that your code is going to turn the CPU into strawberry jelly, you would be correct if you said 'there's no known mechanism that will cause that'.

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

#226
post #174

Since the mRNA covid vaccines seem to only work for 90-180 days, why would a vaccine for anything else be different?

AIDS and COVID are extremely different.

If you are exposed to COVID but got the vax a year ago, you’re likely to have symptoms. You probably don’t actively have antibodies. But that’s okay! You might have some symptoms, in fact they might be severe, but given enough time your immunity will ramp back up, and you still will clear the virus.

If you clear HIV after a week or two, that is a HUGE win for you.

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

#227
post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like it perpetuates the myth that LGBTQ+ is a monolithic group. HIV is more concerning for Gay men for a variety of reasons. There is nothing wrong with pointing out the obvious. Ask anyone who takes prep.

Your comment perpetuates the myth that gay men as a group are a homogenous whole. More specifically HIV, it's more of a concern for non-monogamous gay, and bisexual, men who engaging in unprotected anal intercourse.

That seems like it's needlessly splitting hairs.

"STDs aren't a problem for humans as a group. They're a concern for people who have sex"

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

#228
post #129

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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.

> 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. Is that why the response to Delta was "just take another dose of the original formulation" and the response to Omicron was "just take another dose of the original formulation until we have the new one made up in a few months"? And who doesn't see another strain t…

I suspect the fact that we're in the middle of a pandemic has something to do with this, though.

In particular, the demand is such that we urgently need hundreds of millions (or billions?) of doses. That takes a lot of effort to roll out. Most vaccines probably don't see use at that scale and speed. An HIV vaccine, for example, would probably initially only go out to communities with higher risk.

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

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't know this. Could you explain the reason?

Presumably the viral load required for transmission is greater than the viral load required for detection.

That seems like a big if? maybe 0.5% of people actually are succeptable to the lowered viral load. Have studies been done that would detect such a population?

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

#230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an interest in this too, with most of the worlds population infected with some type HSV and being linked to Alzheimer's disease, MS and many horrible disease. It's about time we defeat HSV too!

Epstein-barr virus is in that same category of “lots of latent, lifelong infections that are maybe linked to a ton of age-related diseases in weird ways”. No idea if it’s a potential target, but would be pretty cool!

Ask and you shall receive:

https://www.umassmed.edu/news/news-archives/2022/01/phase-i-...

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