The most hopeful vaccine for AIDS fails

by time news

The only vaccine against HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, that was still in clinical trials has proven ineffective. It was recognized by the laboratory that manufactures it, Johnson & Johnsonyesterday Wednesday.

Although this is a new disappointment in HIV vaccine development, it is by no means surprising.

Already in 2021 the published results of the study A bag in which this vaccine manufactured for HIV was being tested, offered a new failure in terms of protection.

The study showed that the vaccine did not confer convincing protection against HIV infection.

Imbokodo started in 2017 and involved 2,600 women in South Africa and four other neighboring countries.

Glenda Gray, who runs the South African Medical Research Council and supervised the trial protocol, even comparing the efficacy of the vaccine with a placebo.

The results, announced by the company itself, showed that lThe efficacy of the vaccine was only 25%.

It was too low an efficacy for the vaccine to be useful. It is enough to remember that vaccines against Covid-19 have an efficacy range always higher than 70-75%, reaching in some cases 90%.

The data reported now by J&J correspond to the study Mosaicconducted in the Americas and Europe and which began in 2019. Mosaico tested the compound in 3,800 transgender people and men who have sex with men.

It was an improved version of the vaccine to protect against transmission via the rectal, rather than vaginal, route.

Both Imbokodo and Mosaico combined a total of four doses from two different intakes.

So far, dozens of vaccine candidates have been tested, and all of them have been ruled out.

The news is «disappointingbut it is not the end of the effort to develop a vaccine,” he said in an interview. Anthony S. Fauci, who headed the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases until December. “There are other strategic approaches.”

This new failure undoubtedly represents a brake on the race towards a vaccine.

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