They are testing a new type of AIDS vaccine in humans

After more than three decades of research, an effective and safe vaccine to prevent the spread of the HIV virus is not yet available. Is this the definitive?

It has been more than 30 years since the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) was identified, and yet we still have no effective vaccine to prevent it from spreading. Although in countries like ours, AIDS seems to be a disease of the past, we must not forget that, according to the World Health Organization, HIV remains one of the biggest health problems in the world. lives

Why is it so complicated to find an effective vaccine?

HIV has a great ability to mutate quickly, in addition to "hiding" in the body and remaining inactive to reactivate years later. As a result: we are fighting a very elusive virus that has many different forms, and we also need a vaccine that is effective in the long run.

The latest data were published in The Lancet and show the results of phase 1 / 2a (administration to healthy volunteers and early administration in patients) of a vaccine against the HIV-1 virus, which causes the majority of infections, which uses a serotype 26 adenovirus as a vector.

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Adenoviruses are a family of viruses very commonly used to carry genes, in this case genes coding for HIV antigens. . In short, a kind of molecular Trojans that carry parts of different types of HIV to trigger an immune response against different strains of virus in the world.

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The work shows the results of two parallel trials: the first among 393 healthy adults with a low risk of contracting AIDS in East Africa, South Africa, Thailand and the United States . The volunteers received the placebo or one of the different combinations of vaccines to make sure it is safe and does not cause any adverse reactions.

Promising but not definitive results

According to Dan Barouch, a professor at Harvard Medical School and research leader, "the vaccine induces robust immune responses in participants". More significant are the results of the second study, carried out on Rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta), which were then inoculated with a virus similar to HIV: the vaccine offered total protection against infection in two-thirds of the 72 individuals. where he tried.

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Developing an HIV vaccine is very complicated because of the virus's high ability to mutate rapidly.

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The results are promising, but preliminary. The next step is to see what happens on a large scale when the virus attacks people potentially immunized with the vaccine.

Source: Very Interesting

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