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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

#361

Post by hiptobecubic »

Terry_Roll wrote: post #338
Nbox9 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CDC backing up this claim. Having an undetectable viral load prevents transmission during sex —- but likely not during needle sharing. The answer to why seems to be an obvious “because there are less virus particles”. I’m linking a couple of scientific studies following couples having condomless sex where one partner is HIV positive, on ART with low viral load. Among the about 2000 couples in these studies there were…

So some other points. Some Sex lubes can make it easier for infections to get into the body. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_lubricant#Water-based Thing is I wonder if a higher vitamin A and zinc intake can help because all epithelial cells need retinol (vitamin A), zinc is needed to move retinol around the body as Retinol Binding Protein (RBP) for epithelial cells. Alcohol can reduce fat soluble vitamins stor…

I had no idea "dry sex" was a thing. I am speechless. wtf?

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

#362

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#363

Post by deltaonefour »

mlyle wrote: post #21
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…

There's some known HIV "bnAbs", or broadly neutralizing antibodies. The thing is, these are not the antibodies most humans develop in response to HIV. Previous HIV vaccine attempts have only done a fair job at eliciting these broadly neutralizing responses. e.g. SAV001, a "whole killed" HIV vaccine, only produces broadly neutralizing antibodies in about a third of recipients (and less broadly neutralizing response in…

I'm pretty sure that if the this vaccine succeeds there's going to be a new strain of HIV that can get around it.

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

#364

Post by macksd »

I'm curious how trials like this work, in that if you engage in practices that leave you at risk of HIV infection, you really ought to use condoms or other prophylactic measures. Without telling people they no longer recommend such practices, I wonder how they get enough signal to prove efficacy.

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

#365

Post by Gigachad »

throwaway329183 wrote: post #343
Gigachad wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>a lifelong illness Another thing to consider is it isn't a life long illness anymore. It's a life long subscription to a drug which neutralizes the threat and lets you live an entirely normal life without any problems other than having to take the drug periodically forever. Certainly not ideal but its not like you suffer illness.

I see the point but you could argue the same for nicotine dependence, diabetes, depression & anxiety, vision problems, allergies, etc. Maybe you can't afford the treatment, maybe you have side effects, maybe you don't know you need it...

Most of these things the medication only helps some amount. For HIV it's meant to be 100% effective and makes it undetectable to testing. All active HIV is killed and only inactive HIV remains but inactive HIV doesn't harm you, it only seeds a new active infection.

And in most countries the treatment is funded by the government.

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

#366

Post by make3 »

macksd wrote: post #364

I'm curious how trials like this work, in that if you engage in practices that leave you at risk of HIV infection, you really ought to use condoms or other prophylactic measures. Without telling people they no longer recommend such practices, I wonder how they get enough signal to prove efficacy.

I assume they will test it in regions of the world that are more affected

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

#368

Post by ev1 »

Terry_Roll wrote: post #338
Nbox9 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CDC backing up this claim. Having an undetectable viral load prevents transmission during sex —- but likely not during needle sharing. The answer to why seems to be an obvious “because there are less virus particles”. I’m linking a couple of scientific studies following couples having condomless sex where one partner is HIV positive, on ART with low viral load. Among the about 2000 couples in these studies there were…

So some other points. Some Sex lubes can make it easier for infections to get into the body. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_lubricant#Water-based Thing is I wonder if a higher vitamin A and zinc intake can help because all epithelial cells need retinol (vitamin A), zinc is needed to move retinol around the body as Retinol Binding Protein (RBP) for epithelial cells. Alcohol can reduce fat soluble vitamins stor…

> Anyone who paid attention to the Ebola outbreak in Africa a few years back, may remember that some viruses like Ebola can hide in parts of the body where the immune system can not go, namely the eyes and the testes and sometimes the brain, so they may have remembered that blokes testing negative for Ebola but previously had it, could still be passing it on through semen.

You might find this interesting, the "few years back" might be now again: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03901-9

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

#369

Post by lamontcg »

siver_john wrote: post #57
f6v wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not familiar with vaccine tech. Can’t you grow the peptide of interest and package it in a traditional vaccine?

Strictly speaking you can, and not knowing the exact reasons this approach is moved to human trials where others have not, I can only conjecture. However, the mRNA vaccine may be more stable in a way that makes it easier to make or store or for entrance into the body. Not to mention purification steps may be easier. You don't need to make this in some exotic cell line which creates a protein soup you have to purify.…

Viral vector vaccines are going to stimulate the innate and intrinsic immune system and you're going to get things like IL-6 release and apoptosis of the "infected" cells without generating any humoral repsonse to produce T-cells, B-cell and neutralizing antibodies.

mRNA vaccines are particularly useful because you can substitute bases with N1-methylpseudouridine which makes them identify as "self" by TLRs and doesn't generate counter-productive innate immune responses. You do need an adjuvant so that the cell produces more MHC displaying the antigen and attracts lymphocytes but the nanoparticle works to do that.

The result is a very small message payload to the immune system that targets the correct system. Viral vectors all have more "stuff" all over them which are going to trip other parts of the immune system (or cause side effects like the PF6 interaction with the Adenovirus capsid that is responsible for the rare clotting effects).

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

#370

Post by whimsicalism »

staticassertion wrote: post #306
whimsicalism wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yes. Super equals was inappropriate imo.

I don't know that it's inappropriate.

I mean, technically, there's always a possibility of getting HIV. Particles in your body could spontaneously quantum tunnel at the same time into the form of an HIV virus. This is basically impossible, but not actually (p = 0.00) impossible.

At some point you have to look at a probability and say - that's basically not transmissible.

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