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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

#281

Post by macilacilove »

bluGill wrote: post #251
macilacilove wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 lo…

This conspiracy theory missed something important: competition. There are other companies with their own treatments either one the market or in development trying to take away your customers. If you can find a better treatment and roll it out you get all that money, if you don't you risk someone else finding it first and taking away all your sales anyway.

The more effective treatment will shrink the market, therefore market forces incentivize competitors to cooperate. It is the same reason that the OPEC exists. It is called game theory, not conspiracy theory.

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

#282

Post by abeppu »

bluGill wrote: post #254
abeppu wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, it seems like it did _something_ meaningful. But if you were part of an at-risk population, how promising would you really consider an animal trial that, for most treatment subjects, delayed infection by 5 weeks? Note, these animals had received multiple vaccines/boosters spaced out over a year before they were exposed to SHIV, i.e they spent 10x as long being vaccinated as they resisted infection.

Better than nothing. Maybe not enough for me to stop whatever other practices I'm doing to reduce risk, but it seems like a good shield in case one of those others fail.

But the alternative isn't nothing.

E.g. one class of alternatives is PrEP which is very effective, well-tolerated in many patients, and depending on country, pretty affordable. Oh, maybe for various reasons, regularly getting and taking pills is difficult for some populations, and a series of injections makes more sense? Subdermal injections for PrEP are also in the works and look like they would work for more than a year.

I would love there to be a really highly effective vaccine. But PrEP sets the bar relatively high for a vaccine to actually be an improvement, right?

https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/risk/prep/index.html https://www.aidsmap.com/news/mar-2021/reformulated-islatravi...

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

#283

Post by megaman821 »

marcosdumay wrote: post #160
megaman821 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Covid-19 vaccines were made against the original strain in which it was 95% effective. Let's see how the updated Omicron vaccine goes. I am guessing we are going to see above 90% effectiveness. mRNA vaccines are looking pretty promising at neutralizing the specific virus they are targeting. How effective that is for mutated and related viruses is what remains to be seen.

> How effective that is for mutated and related viruses is what remains to be seen. I imagine that depends much more on the virus than on the vaccine.

Wouldn't it depend more on how well-chosen the target protein is? If it mutates too fast the vaccine won't be as effective. This says nothing about the effectiveness of the mRNA technique though, which seems to reliable induce an immune response to the target protein.

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

#284

Post by suifbwish »

mikaeluman wrote: post #235

I remember growing up being terrified of HIV/AIDS. The idea of something being permanent and transmissible via sex, and literally dismounting your immune defense to all other diseases on the planet... To this day it still terrifies me, even though the treatments have become so good. Each year it seems there are new stories about HIV research, and progress keeps being made. I pray for positive results and am really am…

No post body was provided.

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

#285

Post by ifyoubuildit »

outworlder wrote: post #225
ifyoubuildit wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 n…

Analogies are always flawed, but in this one, the pharmaceutical is the code and the human population is the set of machines its going to run on. The adverse effect would be an error that happens during runtime.

It's not quite strawberry jelly, but depending on the target you're writing for, you could destroy the actual hardware (think embedded devices).

If you presuppose that adverse effects can't happen, then sure, your quip makes sense. But pharmaceuticals having adverse effects isn't some unimaginable thing, it's expected and tested for.

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

#287

Post by hashimotonomora »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #279
hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Viral load. Number of viral copies per volume of fluid. Merely exposing someone to a virus does not necessarily result in widespread infection. A low enough number of copies could be neutralized by the host's immune response before it has a chance to spread significantly. How low this number is depends on the virus. For example, COVID-19 load is higher in symptomatic patients. Chronic viral infections are managed by…

At that low virion count it’s more about the probability that a virion will attach to the correct CD4 receptor and be able to work inside the cell. It’s not about the host's immune system defeating or being defeated on a number basis.

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

#288

Post by snowwrestler »

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…

The thing to understand about vaccines is that they trigger things that your body does all the time by itself. A vaccine is more like kicking off a job than deploying new source code.

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

#289

Post by hashimotonomora »

lixtra wrote: post #239
jl6 wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does sound suspiciously like wishful thinking though, doesn’t it? You can’t sample all parts and all fluids of someone’s body all the time. Maybe trace undetectable levels of the virus can be transmitted, and of course they are going to look like a “no transmission” case if you lack the ability to detect that amount of virus. And that’s either not a problem (if trace levels = no symptoms), or a ticking time bomb w…

> You can’t sample all parts and all fluids of someone’s body all the time. Maybe trace undetectable levels of the virus can be transmitted… You don’t need to be a 100% sure. Once the risk becomes small enough you can spend your time worrying about other risks.

Risks like these are orthogonal and additive. There’s no reason to discard any risk but to hedge them.

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

#290

Post by Veliladon »

Koffiepoeder wrote: post #286

Honest question: since making mrna candidate vaccines is apparently so easy, would it be feasible to include mrna of multiple disease proteins in one vaccine? Is there hope for e.g. a general std-vaccine that covers all of the most common std's?

Yes. On the respiratory side Moderna already have a vaccine in development for quadrivalent flu, COVID-19 and RSV in the same shot projected for a 2023 release.
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