HIV Vaccine Coming

[Lonnie]

 

 

 

 

HIV Vaccine Trial Shows 97 Percent Effectiveness in Humans

In a recent trial, a vaccine yielded success in nearly all participants, and it may be effective against other diseases.

 

A potential HIV vaccine is showing very promising results in Phase I human trials, according to Scripps Research and IAVI, a nonprofit research organization that develops vaccines and antibodies for HIV and other diseases.

The vaccine works by stimulating the production of rare immune cells that generate HIV-resistant antibodies. Such a result was found in 97 percent of human participants administered the potential vaccine. The findings were presented at the International AIDS Society HIV Research for Prevention conference in early February but have only recently generated media attention.

Since HIV emerged as a pandemic in the early 1980s, scientists have been trying to figure out a way to outsmart the wily virus, which easily morphs into different strains and makes it difficult to create an effective immune response. The potential vaccine has initially shown efficacy in prompting certain cells to create antibodies that can fend off HIV in its various iterations.

An HIV vaccine would have enormous global benefits; currently around 38 million people around the world are living with the disease, which can now be controlled through medication. Researchers believe the potential vaccine could yield benefits in the fight against other diseases, like malaria and influenza.

The next steps with this potential HIV vaccine will be additional clinical trials.

“This study demonstrates proof of principle for a new vaccine concept for HIV, a concept that could be applied to other pathogens, as well,” William Schief, Ph.D., a professor and immunologist at Scripps Research and executive director of vaccine design at IAVI's Neutralizing Antibody Center, said in a statement. “With our many collaborators on the study team, we showed that vaccines can be designed to stimulate rare immune cells with specific properties, and this targeted stimulation can be very efficient in humans. We believe this approach will be key to making an HIV vaccine and possibly important for making vaccines against other pathogens.”

[W312312]

Much needed good news. Covid-19 has been a terrible tragedy, but all the tireless research into mRNA vaccine technology could benefit humans greatly in the future. 

[caeron]

I truly hope so.

 

The HIV pandemic has been a low level lockdown on all of us for decades. Gods, I would love to be free of the weight of that.

[PeterRS]

If the Reagan Administration had paid attention to the appeals of doctors and scientists at the CDC when HIV first appeared on the East and West coasts, and if it had put in the resources and funding that have been thrown at covid19, perhaps an HIV vaccine would have been discovered many years earlier. But the ultra conservatives around Reagan were resolutely against putting funds into what they regarded as an exclusively gay illness. Even when it became clear that HIV paid no attention to the sex of those it infected, ithe administration still dragged its feet thereby allowing the virus to spread exponentially around the world.

Despite Trump's disastrous inaction, we have learned that viruses can be controlled if they are identified early and enough money is allocated to researchers.

[Guest]

On 4/13/2021 at 5:28 AM, PeterRS said:

If the Reagan Administration had paid attention to the appeals of doctors and scientists at the CDC when HIV first appeared on the East and West coasts, and if it had put in the resources and funding .......

1  The US is not the only country capable of funding medical developments.

2  HIV is a lot more complicated than Covid.

3  Technical capability has advanced by orders of magnitude since the AIDS outbreak.    I gather it took a few years to work out what AIDS was, whereas with covid it was sequenced within a few days, then in some cases, vaccines were designed within a few hours.  We just had to wait for the trials and manufacturing.

[caeron]

 

My recollection of the time is that almost nobody gave a fuck if it was complicated or not because it was happening to gay men and brown people (remember all the Haitian finger pointing?).

They started caring when it started spreading and they realized it wasn't jut going to kill undesirables.

 

 

[PeterRS]

5 hours ago, z909 said:

1  The US is not the only country capable of funding medical developments.

2  HIV is a lot more complicated than Covid.

3  Technical capability has advanced by orders of magnitude since the AIDS outbreak.    I gather it took a few years to work out what AIDS was, whereas with covid it was sequenced within a few days, then in some cases, vaccines were designed within a few hours.  We just had to wait for the trials and manufacturing.

Naturally other countries have similar research facilities to the US CDC. I mentioned the USA only because HIV first appeared in clusters of men in the New York and the Southern California areas. As numbers increased, it was inevitable that the CDC should have become heavily involved. Even so, it was the Pasteur Institute in Paris that first isolated the virus. 

Another difference between HIV and covid19 is that HIV has - or certainly had at that time - a very long incubation period that could be up to well over two years before symptoms of AIDS became apparent. It therefore took around 2 years before the first cases started appearing in other western countries. Although the first cases had appeared in 1981, by the end of 1984 there were ten times more cases diagnosed in the USA than in Europe.

It was the denial of the Reagan Administration to persistent appeals from the CDC and many dedicated members of the medical profession in general for urgent funding to determine the cause of HIV and then to analyse the make up of the virus. Had funding been thrown at research in those first two years, it is hard to find experts today who do not agree that the anti-viral medications would have been discovered much earlier. Perhaps there would also be a vaccine now, although that is much more debatable.

Another crucial difference between HIV and covid19 is that after HIV had been discovered it was soon known to be a death sentence. There was therefore a massive amount of fear within first the gay community and soon thereafter the population at large. Tracking and tracing became hugely difficult as many who might have caught it were terrified about knowing their HIV status and would not be tested.  I remember. I lived through those years.

The doctors and researchers who worked on the early HIV cases and their desperate race to find Patient Zero are magnificently chronicled in Randy Shilts' book "And The Band Played On." Although Patient Zero was first thought to be a Canadian airline steward, this was subsequently disproved. Even for those who have seen the much less effective TV programme based on the book, I think everyone - and especially every gay man - should read it. It is available in a kindle edition.

"The most thorough, comprehensive exploration of the AIDS epidemic to date . . . It is fascinating, frightening, and essential reading." -San Francisco Sentinel

https://www.amazon.com/Band-Played-Politics-Epidemic-20th-Anniversary-ebook/dp/B000V761ZA

[Lonely_John]

This company is working on a functional cure

 

[Lonnie]

On 6/12/2021 at 4:45 PM, Lonely_John said:

This company is working on a functional cure

Fantastic!