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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

#451

Post by de_bioinf »

outworlder wrote: post #220
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…

One single employee at Pfizer created 10 vaccine candidates in one day. > Now, the thing is that you can’t just sequence a virus, do bioinformatics, synthesize mRNA and package it into a nano particle. You can, and that's exactly what was done. However, out of the 10 or so candidates, they selected a few of the more promising ones to continue research. They are fast to develop. However, there are other steps in the p…

The article you linked is a reckless oversimplifaction of the mRNA vaccine development process. In my opinion, it is dangerous towards an understanding of mRNA vaccines and how they will impact our future.

First, BioNTech (not Pfizer) had 10-15 years to research, develop and test vaccines against new zoogenic Corona viruses. There was literature regarding the modification of the spike protein even before SARS-CoV-2 hit. BioNTech had either SARS or MERS candidates years before the pandemic.

Second, we cannot compute "how it will fold" either.

Third, discussions on HN always, always leave out the hard and messy parts: Wet lab and patient studies.

I am a huge fan of mRNA vaccinations, but the understanding of their potential is hugely different between the "hacker world" (HN, Twitter computer scientist bubble, etc.) and the biology world.

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

#452

Post by Animats »

feupan wrote: post #390
vymague wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, the fact that 4 STDs are incurable still frightens me.

HIV, HPV, herpes, what’s the fourth one? At least for HPV there’s a vaccine though.

* HPV vaccine - in use

* Herpes vaccine - 10 different ones in development.[1]

* Hepatitis C - difficult, and several vaccines have been developed that didn't work.[2] Drug treatments are effective, at last, but started at $80,000 and are now down below $30,000 in the US.

[1] https://www.precisionvaccinations.com/vaccines/herpes-vaccin...

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC8402855/

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

#453

Post by vineyardmike »

f6v wrote: post #113
arcticbull wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I somewhat agree, but condoms aren’t just for HIV and save from other potentially lethal diseases. So the benefit is just enormous, yet folks still don’t use them. At the same time, look the vaccination rates in the Eastern Europe. I suspect it’s somewhat hard to get people vaccinated against the disease they don’t take seriously. I mean, HIV is horrible. Yet so many people ignore protection.

> I mean, HIV is horrible. Yet so many people ignore protection.

Because sex is good. And sometimes spontaneous. And often combined with other drugs (booze) and people make bad decisions.

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

#454

Post by sampo »

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…

There is an "independent action hypothesis" in virology. It states that each virus particle (virion) has an independent probability of starting the infection in the body.

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2009.006...

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

#455

Post by sterlind »

est31 wrote: post #441
raducu wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And undetectable === untransmittable. Just in case people here didn't know. In no way saying this is not a good thing, but do we know if this can be sustained for the whole lifetime? Or is it that 20, 30 years later, as people get older the person eventually gets AIDS?

As long as they take their daily ART pills, they are safe from AIDS in specific, which is basically a death sentence. But things are not black and white. Someone who has ever been HIV positive counts as immuno compromised for their entire life. Studies have shown that there is basically no shortening of life expectancy, if you start ART early enough in the process. > if the person with HIV started ART with a CD4 coun…

I've heard HIV patients describe ART as "aging" their organs. obviously preferable to dying horribly from AIDS, but still gnarly to contend with.

it's really interesting to me that their health becomes poorer earlier, but that it doesn't affect mortality.

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

#456

Post by sterlind »

ImaCake wrote: post #299
XorNot wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Specifically it's advantageous because bnAB development requires 2 separate immune stimulii applied over months. Injecting protein bolus (traditional vaccines) then requires something like 6+ separate, different vaccines - so 6 synthetic paths, production lines etc. mRNA eliminates all of that. The 2 immune pathways can be combined into 1 vaccine, and the multiple vaccines can all be produced with the same synthetic…

Yep. In fact mRNA vaccines are almost trivially easy to produce. I know for a fact that many biology labs around the world bought the reagents needed to make homebrew mRNA vaccines in earl 2020. Just in case big pharma screwed up. It would have only been a few days work for them to produce it for themselves and I wouldn’t be surprised if some American and European labs actually did it.

mRNA vaccines don't use regular mRNA though, they use nucleoside analogues to avoid triggering an innate immune response to the mRNA itself. is it really that easy to homebrew that? plus encapsulating it into lipid nanoparticles etc. sounds like it'd be a major project..

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

#457

Post by hdjjhhvvhga »

sampo wrote: post #454
matheusmoreira wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There is an "independent action hypothesis" in virology. It states that each virus particle (virion) has an independent probability of starting the infection in the body. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2009.006...

So it it turns out true, there is no "safe level" - we could talk about an extremely small probability, but it would still be higher than 0 - not exactly a risk one would like to take.

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

#458

Post by hdjjhhvvhga »

FooBarBizBazz wrote: post #396
mlyle wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some cultures believe lubrication is a sign of poor virtue or infidelity. Women use chalk, cornstarch, etc, to ensure they stay dry and to (supposedly) enhance the pleasure of their partner.

It makes zero sense, but yeah. There was a thing not long ago where talcum powder, I think Johnson & Johnson, had some asbestos contamination (asbestos being another mineral that can come from the same mines, apparently). And people were suing because it gave them cancer of the uterus and other internal parts of the female reproductive system. Which makes you go: Wait a second. How the hell does that happen? That's h…

I find it hard to believe. Wouldn't it make more sense that the powder was in contact with the external reproductive parts for extended amounts of time (which is its normal usage) and as a result some parts managed to get inside?

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

#459

Post by ausudhz »

refurb wrote: post #406
epgui wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I’m a drug developer and I’d rather take an Advil than the vaccine. Look at Vioxx. It took 4 years on the market before anyone realized it increased the risk of heart attacks. Advil has been around for decades. It has known risks.

Yes and the known risks are calculated within the trials or after few days of usage. Definitely not 20 years after you've gotten the first pill. Would be pretty hard to correlate it to something that happened 20 years ago.

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

#460

Post by [deleted] »

mlyle wrote: post #401
Retric wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could say the same thing about people drinking heavily only to wake up the next day with a massive hangover. So it isn’t the differences between them that’s causing people to screw over their future self.

I can't comprehend 1000-year-from-now me. I don't think I would take many actions to improve life for 1000-year-from-now me even if I knew I could live millennia. Doing so does not buy me any comfort today and does not let me "give" to any person that I identify with or recognize as part of me. I can imagine time scales on a par with how long I've lived and to a lesser extent to the ages of people I identify with. (5…

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