RENÉ GARRETT, Special to The Denisonian—
On Thursday, January, 27th, 2022, Moderna Inc. announced, in conjunction with International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, they administered 56 human participants with the first doses of an experimental mRNA HIV vaccine; launching the first clinical trial with the technology. The patented mRNA biotechnology is the same technology used in Moderna and Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccines.
This is a novel approach to both HIV and vaccination. Traditional approaches to inoculation include administering weakened viruses to induce a B-cell response, which creates antibodies, in response to infection to prepare the immune system for effective response at the moment of infection. The body stores this immunological information for other moments of infection.
New viral vector vaccines such as mRNA have a different structure. The mRNA consists of a vector and passenger where the vector is an immunological vehicle and the passenger contains the information the vector delivers to cells for inoculation. This is much different from traditional inoculation where a weakened virus, known as an antigen, is administered to produce an immune response, where B-cells produce antibodies that can be life-saving at the moment of actual infection. mRNA skips this altogether.
This has been life-saving for COVID-19. According to Statista, a provider of market and consumer data, out of the 500 million vaccines administered in the U.S. more than 200 million were Moderna vaccines. In a December 2021 CNBC interview, “Why The HIV Vaccine Is Closer Than Ever”, Mitchell Warren, Executive Director at the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, explained that Moderna’s mRNA biotechnology was developed prior to the discovery of the SARS-2/COVID-19 virus.
In fact, quoted in the same CNBC segment, analyses from Resource Tracking for HIV Prevention Research & Development, a 16-year-old project, totals U.S. government spending on HIV vaccine funding from 2000-2020 at roughly $12 billion. This is compared to the $10 billion the trump administration approved for mRNA research in the face of COVID-19 in 2020. So while infectious disease and allergy research overlaps, COVID-19 research has distinctly benefited from ground laid in the search for an HIV/AIDS vaccine.
Human trials are currently in Phase I with 56 healthy, seronegative (HIV negative), adult participants at the University of Texas-Health Science Center, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Hope Clinic, and George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences.
This is groundbreaking for the ways vaccination in HIV is much more complicated than in the body’s response to COVID-19. Different from COVID-19, HIV is an unstable virus that is constantly mutating within the body. Even with vector vaccine structures like the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, an induced immune response from the body cannot keep up.
A study from the University of Kentucky published in 2014 “Prevalence of HIV Testing and Associated Risk Factors in College Students”, showed that only about 36% of students had been tested for HIV – ever. Knowledge of HIV amongst college students is necessary as youth ages 13-24 consist of about a quarter of the 50,000 new infections each year. If you are a student and having sex, consider reaching out to Whilser Health Center for the Glove Box initiative that offers students anonymous sexual health materials including contraceptives. To sign up visit: https://denison.edu/campus/health