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Moderna’s HIV Vaccine Prepped for Trials in Africa
- WaxedChewbacca 4y ago
- geewee 4y agoIn your comment history we have both climate change denial and now AIDS-denial as well. You're certainly one to think outside the box.
- ceejayoz 4y ago“Keep an open mind but not so open that your brain falls out.”
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- WaxedChewbacca 4y ago
- aqme28 4y agoWhy are you convinced you weren't legitimately downvoted? It's an old conspiracy that you're pushing and it doesn't have a lot of traction.
- logicchains 4y ago
- bigDinosaur 4y agoHe appears currently to be a professor a the University of California, Berkeley. I don't think that counts as 'career destroyed' unless you mean HIV researchers ignore him. Which seems reasonable.
- WaxedChewbacca 4y ago
- WaxedChewbacca 4y ago
- Mvandenbergh 4y ago*nah man, I voted it down.
- yakak 4y ago> Example: it's "AIDS" if the nonsense test goes one way, and merely pneumonia if the nonsense test goes the other way. TB is not a disease and the test for it is nonsense. For example it is TB if the test goes one way and just bronchitis if the test goes the other way. Of course, if you are ignoring this nonsense test you'll always want the treatment quacks give when the test is positive, if living is a thing you are into.
- vmception 4y ago
- laurencerowe 4y agoWhat isn’t it saying?
- mrslave 4y agoThe probability of them acquiring HIV within 6 months without the vaccine under trial.
- bruce511 4y agoThey're not testing for efficacy, but rather safety. Looking for side effects etc... Efficacy won't be proved by this trial, although potentially disproved.
- barry-cotter 4y agoIf those 18 people are randomly selected all they’re doing is testing for safety, phase 1. If they expect to get anything about efficacy out of it the only population where there’s a sliver of a chance of getting signal given base rates of infection is one of the populations that get HIV a lot. Those are men who have sex with men and sex workers. I presume they were trying to gesture at the first but 18 is just too small to get anything worthwhile unless you’re doing a human challenge trial. Choosing 18 people who have lots of unprotected sex and don’t use PREP would not pass a sane person trying to be good. It certainly wouldn’t pass any plausible IRB. IRBs wouldn’t approve fire if it was new.
- mikeyouse 4y agoWe don't have to guess.. it's literally in the article. This is a Phase 1 trial purely to test safety and immunogenicity. More details: > The IAVI-sponsored trial, IAVI G003, builds on progress in HIV vaccine research. Recent findings from the Phase I clinical trial IAVI G001 showed that vaccination with the HIV immunogen eOD-GT8 60mer as a recombinant protein safely induced the targeted immune responses in 97% of recipients (healthy U.S. adults). The immune response — targeting and expanding a specific class of B cells — is needed to start the process of developing broadly neutralizing antibodies (bnAbs). The induction of bnAbs is widely considered to be a goal of an efficacious HIV vaccine, and this B-cell activation is the first step in that process. IAVI G003 is designed to test the hypothesis that vaccination with eOD-GT8 60mer, developed by scientific teams at IAVI and Scripps Research, delivered via Moderna’s mRNA platform, can induce similar immune responses in African populations as was seen for IAVI G001.
- bigDinosaur 4y agoOne thing I didn't realise with HIV is that initially the body does produce effective neutralising antibodies. That's what causes viral levels to decrease for the first few months, and also the slow decline that characterises chronic HIV before it turns into AIDS. It's just that HIV mutates far too quickly and the body cannot keep up. This makes me less hopeful about vaccines. I assume one will succeed eventually, just that it's a slog and will have many more failures.
- throwawaylinux 4y agoHow does the body keep up initially? If the body got from viral load N to N/2 despite HIV mutating, then why can't it go from N/2 to N/4? Does the body slow down or the virus speed up?
- Zircom 4y agoMy assumption -- with the initial infection the body creates antibodies to fight off that original strain. As it spreads to more and more cells and churns out copies, it mutates slightly every time it replicates. And then each of those instances replicates and mutates a little more, becoming a bunch of different strains. And while initially the original antibodies will be effective to start with those strains, eventually they'll muttate enough to where you have so many different strains where suddenly the antibodies aren't working anymore and that's probably the point where the immune systems gets overloaded trying to produce antibodies for all these different strains, and as soon as it catches up it all becomes worthless, because in the meantime a ton of other different strains have mutated in the meantime, and so on and so on. tl;dr snowball effect
- derefr 4y agoPerhaps the strain that spreads well is easy for antibodies to kill; but mutates easily into a variant that doesn't spread very well, but is very hard to kill.
- throwaway742 4y agoNot an expert here, but my layman's understanding is that as it is a disease that attacks the immune system the bodies ability to fight off each new generation is gradually diminished until eventually it is not able to fight off the new mutations any more.
- bsnal 4y ago
- vidarh 4y agoMonkey pox isn't new. To the point where Bavarian Nordics smallpox vaccine (MVA-BN/Jynneos) is also approved for monkey pox: https://www.fda.gov/vaccines-blood-biologics/jynneos https://www.fda.gov/vaccines-blood-biologics/jynneos
- Schopenhauer01 4y ago
- junon 4y agoIt's almost like we develop vaccines in response to things....
- vidarh 4y agoIn this case the primary driver for these vaccines are still smallpox, given that smallpox is seen as a risk because of the potential for bioterrorism, combined with the fact the old smallpox vaccines had risks. So there's been several new smallpox vaccines after smallpox disappeared from the wild, because there's been a market for tens of millions of doses for them that's been far more interesting to the manufacturers than monkeypox.
- SemanticStrengh 4y agoYou know we truly live in an insane world when Immunostimulants are not attempted for HIV despite being the obvious treatment.. The mediocrity goes beyond imagination. Thymalin +- thymosin a1 +- thymosin b4 are extremely likely to be the best available cures, Thymalin increase naive T cell production by 680% and the thymosin strongly stimulate T helpers and the adaptativity of the immune system. The major component of HIV is an abrupt thymic involution but hey let's not give them the thymic hormone h o h o https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15078181/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15078181/ lol thymalin defficiency is even found to be the cause preceding AIDS so let's not use it h o h o > Abnormally low plasma thymulin levels preceded the development of peripheral blood T cell abnormalities. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3018210/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3018210/ I'm afraid no one cares for those people. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16940531/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16940531/
- refurb 4y agoWho knew I'd click on HN and come across the cure for HIV!
- SemanticStrengh 4y agowho knew people being in denial of actual potent research would maintain the ignorance of those treatments? https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33237528/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33237528/
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- sph 4y agoI recently replied to a comment of yours where you went on a tirade against benzodiazepines saying there are safer compounds that mainstream medicine chooses to ignore, and here you are doing the same thing with HIV treatments. Anyone cares to chime in and explain why it is not so simple like OP implies it is? Again, I very much doubt mainstream science is completely ignoring the panacea and preferring suboptimal solutions. Smells too much like a conspiracy theory to me.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- curiousgal 4y agoI will never read "Africa" and not roll my eyes. The trials are set to take place in literally just two countries! Every single use of the word seems to perpetuate the stereotype that the entire continent is ravished by famine and disease.
- blenderdt 4y agoWell I think this is really your own bias. The article quickly states that it is being rolled out in 2 African countries. It also fits the context. Countries with the most cases are Russia and almost all countries in Africa (except for the North). So Africa as a continent is in need of a HIV cure.
- hulitu 4y agoI presume that this is an official trial. Because i saw a documentary 10 years ago about Pharma companies testing (also HIV) vaccines in Africa.
- jfengel 4y agoSeveral HIV vaccines have been tested. None have been successful yet. This is an official trial, but it's just Phase I, to see if it's safe. A few vaccines have made it to phase III, but nothing passed yet.
- mrtri 4y ago
- Bubble_Pop_22 4y agoModena and BioNtech will be the future Microsoft and Apple in the corporate landscape. They are headed for great things.
- Markoff 4y agoI doubt it will fare much better than J&J HIV vaccine with 25% "efficacy". https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/31/health/hiv-vaccine-south-africa.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/31/health/hiv-vaccine-south-...
- headsoup 4y agoI'm sure a lot more of these trials will be pushed now that safety monitoring/controls and study quality requirements were relaxed so eagerly for the covid vaccines (and I mean well past the point of the initial unknowns that require leeway). These companies can see dollars as far as they can imagine and public perception has swung incredibly from the lowest of trust groups to the higher brackets.
- begueradj 4y agoPharmaceutical companies always chose Africans for medical experiments
- Frost1x 4y agoWhile your point is well taken given historical context of rampant risky medical trials conducted against african and african american populations that are pretty horrifying, I suspect it has more to do with the high concentration of HIV per capita in Africa. To my knowledge, Africa had one of the highest HIV rates in the world so I suspect this is still the case making it a very reasonable region for the trials. If you had an "obesity" vaccine, the US would be a good population to do trials vs say Ethiopia or Sri Lanka. If you have a Dengue vaccine, you probably wouldn't want trials in northern Canada but would probably target southeast Asia instead.
- dekhn 4y agothis isn't an experiment, it's a trial. Companies don't always do trials in Africa; in fact, they expanded into Eastern Europe and Asia moreso. HIstorically, Africa wasnt used for running trials, nor was it a place were lots of 'experiments' were done. Please get facts correct.
- hammon 4y ago
- cletus 4y agoI hope this is successful. I really do. Given the long dormancy of HIV I really wonder how success is going to be effectively measured. Won't it take years? The mechanics of how a single cell works is mind-blowing. The mechanics of how HIV works is even more mind-blowing. The replicatin process, how it infiltrates a cell, how it avoid detection and how it defeats the body's defenses. This sort of thing gives me a lot of confidence that pretty much any new virus we see is natural because nature is a whole lot better at making viruses than I think any lab could be. The best a lab could really do, at least at this stage, is gain of function on an existing virus.
- guardiangod 4y agoNature is good at what it does because it has time on its side. We humanity don't need ever everlasting immunity- we just need something that work for 20 years, then we will have something newer and better.
- GreaterFool 4y agoI remember an interesting HIV campaign that went something like UVL=0VL It made me think. (undetectable viral load = zero viral load) Perhaps this vaccine will not cure HIV once and for all just yet, but maybe it can work as an alternative to PrEP by keeping the viral load down?
- reureu 4y agoI think you're thinking of "U=U", which stands for "undetectable = untransmittable". At this point in the epidemic, most transmission happens from people who don't know their status, and not from people who are known to be HIV+ and are in treatment.
- elsherbini 4y agoSome numbers for people interested in HIV: Many countries in southern Africa have adult prevalence rates of >10% of HIV. In other parts of Africa most countries have a prevalence of ~1% or less. On other continents most countries have less than 1%, including the US with 0.3% adult prevalence. [1] For all the people wondering why this vaccine is being tested where it is, it's because just like we did for the covid vaccine, you split people up into placebo vs vaccine groups and then wait to see how many people get the virus from each group. If rates of HIV infection are as low as in the United States, you'd need to test the vaccine on ~100-1000x more people to see if it worked. Non sequitur, but too interesting not to share: The estimated risk of acquiring HIV from a single sexual act is way lower than I realized until recently. Receptive vaginal sex with an infected individual is estimated to lead to infection only 8/10,000 times. Receptive anal sex is ~10-20 fold higher, 138/10,000. Sharing needles with an infected person is 63/10,000 [2]. That means you could have an ejaculates worth of HIV virions in your rectum, and be uninfected 49 times out of 50. (However, HIV infects immune cells, so it's way more likely to find an immune cell to infect if there are more in the area. That means infections or inflammation from other causes increase your risk of acquiring HIV compared to having no infection or inflammation. Similarly, way more target cells in blood, so if you have epithelial damage your risk goes up.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_HIV/AIDS_adult_prevalence_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_HIV/AIDS_... [2] https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/risk/estimates/riskbehaviors.html https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/risk/estimates/riskbehaviors.html
- vmception 4y agoYeah and for men doing vaginal sex the risk is way lower of getting infection than being the receptacle. HIV had to be rebranded away from being seen as a same-sex curse to a common ubiquitous threat in the 1990s to get society to care, but its really not something thats as big of a threat for most of us as it was suggested. A lot of it was just not accurate. Generations of heterosexual people running around scared. Probably did slow transmission down, since only “heterosexual” and bisexual men were/are spreading it to women via sex. But also viral load is suppressed and suppressible now.
- 4y ago
- ComradePhil 4y agoBack to testing vaccines in poor helpless countries.