HIV vaccine using mRNA from Moderna starts clinical trail phase

qvoicenews.com:

Researchers have spent more than 30 years and billions of dollars studying HIV (seen in closeup) and various vaccines, with little success.

But, the first doses of an experimental HIV vaccine using the same messenger RNA technology in the highly effective COVID-19 vaccines have been given to clinical trial participants.

Photo: iStock. The first doses of an experimental HIV vaccine using the same messenger RNA technology in the highly effective COVID-19 vaccines have been given to clinical trial participants. “We are tremendously excited to be advancing this new direction in HIV vaccine design with Moderna’s mRNA platform,” ​International AIDS Vaccine Initiative president and CEO Mark Feinberg said in a statement last week. “The search for an HIV vaccine has been long and challenging, and having new tools in terms of immunogens and platforms could be the key to making rapid progress toward an urgently needed, effective HIV vaccine.” The vaccine candidates were developed by researchers at Scripps Research in collaboration with ​International AIDS Vaccine Initiative and Moderna.

The study is underway at George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences in Washington, DC. Other collaborators include the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Emory University in Atlanta, the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.