Moderna to start human trials of HIV vaccine following success of COVID-19 jab

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This article was published 20/08/2021 (1528 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Roughly a year and a half since the first version of its COVID-19 vaccine went into its first human volunteer, Moderna is beginning the process again — this time with a vaccine for HIV.

An entry posted on the American registry for clinical trials says the American biotech company, which is working with several partners, including the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, is ready to begin testing two different vaccine candidates that are based on the same mRNA technology as the COVID-19 shots administered around the world.

The entry of a now-household name into the decades-long hunt for an HIV vaccine is a glimmer of hope in the fight against one of the world’s pernicious viruses. Still, experts warn that when it comes to vaccines, not all viruses are created equal and success is far from certain.

“I’m excited, but I’m not holding my breath,” says Dr. Isaac Bogoch, a leading HIV researcher who is also a member of Ontario’s COVID-19 vaccine task force.

“If it takes a year, or if it takes 20 years, we still have the tools to prevent HIV but this would be a welcome addition.”

Moderna, along with U.S.-based Pfizer and German startup BioNTech, grabbed international attention earlier this year when their respective mRNA-based vaccines proved remarkably effective at preventing COVID-19 and began to roll out around the world.

Although mRNA technology — which involves teaching your body to make proteins that trigger an immune response — had long been thought of as promising, these new vaccines marked the first time it had been applied for widespread use.

Back in January, the head of Moderna called the last year an “extraordinary proof-of-concept period” and said the company was now going to apply the technology against other viruses that had resisted efforts to create a vaccine.

“This has encouraged us to pursue more ambitious development programs within our prophylactic vaccines modality,” Stéphane Bancel, Moderna’s chief executive officer, said in a release on the company’s website.

In addition to HIV, the company plans to attempt vaccines for seasonal flu and the Nipah virus, which has only caused a few outbreaks in Asia so far but is considered a public health risk by the World Health Organization because it can move between animals and humans and has a fatality rate of between 40 and 75 per cent. There is currently no treatment for it.

According to the study description of the new HIV vaccine, an experimental dose will be given to 56 healthy adults to test whether it’s safe and sparks an immune response. This is the very first stage of human testing, which means there’s no guarantee the vaccine will work and, if it does, it’s still at the beginning of a very long road.

Some viruses are easier to create vaccines for than others, and the rapidly mutating human immunodeficiency virus has been a particularly hard nut to crack.

While the unprecedented amount of money and time poured into a COVID-19 vaccine may have given the world the impression that successful vaccines are inevitable, or that efficacy rates higher than 90 per cent are normal, the search for an HIV vaccine has been studded with setbacks.

Just last year a multimillion-dollar South African trial of a vaccine that had been years in the works was stopped after it found “absolutely no evidence of efficacy,” as the head of the study told Science.

It’s very unlikely that Moderna’s HIV vaccine would ever be as effective as their COVID-19 one, particularly right out of the gate. But the trial might allow researchers to learn something about how to ward off the virus, says Dr. Jonathan Angel, the head of infectious diseases at The Ottawa Hospital and University of Ottawa and who conducts research on HIV.

“To think that this first vaccine will actually be one that ever gets marketed is a little bit naive,” he says.

“But to think that it might have some activity, whether it’s just the generation of antibodies or it ultimately does work for a degree of protection? If it shows anything it’ll be helpful because it’ll move the field forward.”

Even without all the money poured into COVID-19 vaccines this past year, it was always going to be harder to develop a vaccine for HIV than for the coronavirus.

For one, it mutates much faster than the coronavirus, making it quick to escape a vaccine, says Angel. In COVID-speak, there are way more variants. Researchers also aren’t clear how exactly the immune system could fight it off, he says.

Bogoch adds that treatments for HIV are so good now — both in terms of preventing infections and treating those who have it — that we technically have the tools to eliminate it if we were to allocate the resources to those who need it most.

“Obviously, my fingers are tightly crossed, you clearly want it to be extremely successful,” he says. “I just don’t think it’s fair to say that just because they knocked it out of the park with COVID-19, that will have the exact same results for HIV, malaria or cancer therapeutics.

“But it’s great to be hopeful.”

Alex Boyd is a Calgary-based reporter for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @alex_n_boyd