What You Need to Know about This New AIDS Vaccine Trial in Africa
Thirty-five years after research began into a cure for AIDS, a vaccine for the deadly virus finally may become a reality. Johnson & Johnson recently announced that it had successfully completed the first phase of trials an AIDS vaccine, which can combat several strains of the virus and so far has shown no long-term side effects. This month, the company announced an AIDS vaccine trial that will be administered to women who live in southern Africa. The vaccine will be given in two doses. The first will prepare the immune system, and the second will heighten the body’s ability to respond to the virus.
This will be the first time a vaccine designed to respond to all strains of HIV has progressed this far through clinical trials. “As a scientist and physician, I can tell you that these results make me more optimistic than ever before that we get to an HIV vaccine in our lifetime,” Paul Stoffels, Johnson & Johnson chief scientific officer, said in a press statement.
Since researchers identified the HIV virus in the 1980s, it has killed more than 35 million people, according to the World Health Organization. The WHO has compared the pathogen to the 14th-century bubonic plague outbreak, which is estimated to have killed about 25 million people in five years. More than 70 million people have been infected with the HIV virus since it was first discovered with WHO estimates recording that about 36 million people are currently infected. Medical developments have helped many live with the virus, but some parts of the world are still gravely affected by the virus. In Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, about one in every 25 adults has HIV.
Upon its initial discovery in the early 1980s, patients generally lived with HIV for eight to 10 years before developing AIDS and succumbing to the disease within two years. Medical advancements, though, have extended the lifespan of many HIV carriers for decades, and scientists now describe HIV as a “chronic, manageable illness.” For those who don’t have access to basic healthcare or medicine, however, AIDS is still a death sentence.
AIDS vaccine — Phase I
The human body is designed to build up defenses toward almost all pathogens, but HIV is unique in that it disables the body’s immune response. As a result, researchers have struggled to develop an effective vaccine.
The first phase of Johnson & Johnson’s AIDS vaccine clinical trials tested a new type of vaccine with a different design compared to standard vaccines. The AIDS vaccine being studied assists the patient’s body to produce antibodies by exposing it to bacteria or an inactive virus. The HIV virus mutates so quickly that it is impossible to vaccinate people against all of the strains, but the trial vaccine uses a “mosaic technique” that causes the body to build up multiple defenses to fight against HIV’s many variations.
In the first phase of clinical trials, six doses of the vaccine successfully blocked HIV infection 66 percent of the time in monkeys. Researchers then tested it on about 400 volunteers in African and Asian countries and the United States who didn’t have HIV. Participants showed a good tolerance for multiple doses of the vaccine, and in most cases, their blood work indicated immune responses to the virus.
AIDS vaccine — Phase II
Researchers have cautioned that larger-scale testing of the vaccine is required before it could be made available to the public. This test should begin by early 2018.
Johnson & Johnson is working with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to conduct the next phase of testing. Researchers will administer the vaccine or a placebo to 2,600 sexually active women ages from ages 18–35 who live in South Africa, Mozambique, Malawi, Zimbabwe, and Zambia — the population most at risk to contract HIV. The trial, named “Imbokodo,” will follow the women for three years to see whether the vaccine can prevent them from becoming infected by a variety of strains of HIV.
Researchers would like the vaccine to show a 90-percent efficacy rate. However, they acknowledge that even a 50 percent success rate could still decrease the infection rate of the HIV virus by 35 percent.
Hope for the future
After spending millions of dollars and conducting a decade of research, Johnson & Johnson officials hope that the clinical trials will lead to a “global vaccine” for the HIV virus that could be effective anywhere in the world. Stoffels has told media outlets that researchers recognize the urgency of the situation, as almost 2 million people become infected with HIV each year. Researchers hope that the vaccine will be available within five years. When it reaches the market, it could have an immediate effect on populations at risk for infection.
