from Hacker News

Moderna’s HIV vaccine has officially begun human trials

by grawprog on 1/31/22, 5:16 PM with 449 comments

  • by hn_throwaway_99 on 1/31/22, 6:15 PM

    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 vaccine would be less effective against them (and, indeed, while the original vaccine is still highly effective against all variants, my understanding is that it is less so than the original variant). And SARS-COV-2 mutates much less easily than HIV.

    Can someone with more knowledge explain the thought process behind this?

  • by mikaeluman on 1/31/22, 9:20 PM

    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 amazed. We have a lot to be thankful for.

  • by 8f2ab37a-ed6c on 1/31/22, 6:49 PM

    I wonder if we'll see HSV also addressed by this new wave of mRNA vaccines, or if it's just not top of mind for companies and researchers due to its "mostly benign" nature. At least until one's immune system starts to weaken with advanced age and it starts to cause all sorts of problems, but perhaps by then it gets swept under the "problems of aging" rug.

  • by mleonhard on 1/31/22, 8:15 PM

    The them.us article [0] says:

    > but we’ll be praying ... that by next year, LGBTQ+ communities around the globe will have a new reason to celebrate.

    This perpetuates the myth that HIV is mainly a problem for gay people. Can we change to another article, such as [1]?

    The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation supports Moderna's HIV vaccine research [2].

    [0] https://www.them.us/story/hiv-aids-vaccine-human-trials-mode...

    [1] https://www.engadget.com/moderna-mrna-hiv-vaccine-trials-225...

    [2] https://www.modernatx.com/ecosystem/strategic-collaborators/...

  • by abeppu on 1/31/22, 6:18 PM

    I'm a bit confused by the timing of this. Here's a press release from only a couple months ago, in which a Moderna partnership on an mRNA vaccine showed some benefit in macaques, but mostly in delaying infection (i.e. most macaques in the treatment group still got SHIV). Only two of seven in the treatment group actually remained uninfected. It sounded like researches wanted to refine and validate their protocol before moving to human trials.

    > “We are now refining our vaccine protocol to improve the quality and quantity of the VLPs produced. This may further increase vaccine efficacy and thus lower the number of prime and boost inoculations needed to produce a robust immune response. If confirmed safe and effective, we plan to conduct a Phase 1 trial of this vaccine platform in healthy adult volunteers,” said Dr. Lusso.

    I interpreted "If confirmed safe and effective" to mean that more animal tests would happen.

    https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/experimental-m...

  • by localhost on 1/31/22, 8:22 PM

    Last night I read this Nature review paper [1] and this history article [2] that describe the parallel investigations in both mRNA technology and lipid nanoparticle technology that ultimately led to the development of mRNA based vaccines. As we come up on Nobel Prize season, the second article is particularly interesting if you want to get a preview of some of the possible recipients.

    [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41578-021-00358-0 [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02483-w

  • by Koffiepoeder on 1/31/22, 10:49 PM

    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?

  • by RcouF1uZ4gsC on 1/31/22, 6:56 PM

    I think that this might be a follow-on benefit of Operation Warp Speed which had a post a few days ago.

    From that post, it seems like one of the benefits to Moderna (apart from a big cash infusion) was that Moderna had the science, but did not actually have the experience and pipelines of actually bringing a drug to a broad market. They did not have the experience and infrastructure for large scale human trials and for the large scale manufacturing.

    Experience with creating, testing, manufacturing, and rolling out the Covid vaccines, were I am sure invaluable in helping Moderna become a "full-stack" drug company.

    Very excited by this development and looking forward to (hopefully promising) results.

    It will be wonderful if we can make HIV/AIDS something future generations will only know from history books.

  • by db1234 on 1/31/22, 9:55 PM

    Does anyone know if mRNA tech can be potentially used to cure food allergy in the future? I know that the pattern is to train immune system to recognize a foreign object and attack it but is it possible to train immune system using mRNA to not attack in certain cases? I did come across a paper from 2018 regarding potential use of mRNA to fight food allergy but I haven't come across any updates since then.

  • by dogma1138 on 1/31/22, 6:09 PM

    Why is the comment with the actual press release that honestly gives far better info flagged to death? @Dang can you fix this?

  • by Pooge on 1/31/22, 6:32 PM

    From my understanding, the effectiveness of the vaccine is measured by monitoring - in the real world - how many vaccinated people of a group catches the virus compared with how many unvaccinated did: how would it work in this case? I guess it would just take a lot of years to come up with a good approximation.

  • by nunez on 2/1/22, 1:31 AM

    This is an even bigger deal than COVID vaccines. Many third-world nations struggle hard with HIV/AIDS; this can be revolutionary for them.

  • by rob_c on 2/1/22, 8:01 AM

    This is going to unfortunately suffer the wrath of their last flu jab being mislabeled for efficacy, safety and longevity.

    I'm not saying it doesn't work it clearly does cut deaths but I think public option is starting to irrevocably sway based on regions which pushed it first. Not to mention the "reduces transmission by X" number keeps dropping with more studies and data...

  • by macksd on 2/1/22, 1:49 AM

    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.

  • by coffeeblack on 2/1/22, 7:54 AM

    So all it took to get here was €10 bln from EU governments and $10 bln from the US government to push the rapid development of mRNA tech?

    Shouldn’t this be done regularly? How about $20 bln to finally get a good malaria vaccine?

  • by ineedasername on 1/31/22, 6:38 PM

    How are human trials on high-risk low-incidence diseases like this conducted?

  • by sharken on 1/31/22, 7:00 PM

    If a HIV vaccine really is happening, that will really brighten the memory of the last two COVID years.

    And as always there are some great insights to the inner working of the vaccine, Hacker News doesn't disappoint.

  • by husamia on 2/2/22, 11:43 PM

    I thought we would never find cure for HIV. This is such huge news.

  • by edmcnulty101 on 2/1/22, 2:01 AM

    I have a friend who has HIV with a zero virus count.

    Does anyone know if this will combat the latent virus?

  • by z3ncyberpunk on 2/1/22, 6:35 PM

    I would never put anything made made by Moderna in my body even if I was on my deathbed.

  • by a45a33s on 2/1/22, 1:01 AM

    this was the real endgame of the vaccine mandates, force the whole world to participate in a trial of mRNA technology so that it could start being used in other profitable products.

  • by dukeofdoom on 1/31/22, 11:29 PM

    Will you still be able catch HIV and pass it on to others all the same, with "lesser symptoms", until the day you die from HIV?

    The post 2021 changed definition of "vaccine" is a bit of any oxymoron.

  • by vecr25 on 1/31/22, 6:06 PM

  • by NaturalPhallacy on 2/1/22, 12:39 AM

    Is this a measles type of vaccine or a covid type of vaccine?

  • by pwned1 on 1/31/22, 8:22 PM

    Since the mRNA covid vaccines seem to only work for 90-180 days, why would a vaccine for anything else be different?

  • by rubyist5eva on 1/31/22, 6:11 PM

    > We could be getting even closer to stopping the spread of HIV/AIDS.

    Not if it's anything like the Covid-19 vaccines that don't stop someone from contracting or spreading it.