Breakthrough COVID Vaccine Could Lead to HIV Vaccine
Scientists are looking to the revolutionary technology used in the COVID-19 vaccines as a framework to find a vaccine for other viruses such as HIV. The Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines are the first-ever mRNA vaccines approved for human use.
Previous types of vaccines expose cells to inactive parts or proteins from a virus in order to train those cells how to respond when the actual virus enters the system. However, the mRNA vaccine does not use part of the virus, rather it is a chemical “code” that enters cells and gives that cell information on how to produce the protein of the virus. Once the body recognizes that protein, which is benign, it will produce antibodies in order to fight it. The immune system will then have to tools to fend off the virus when exposed.
“RNA is basically biological code or biological software,” mRNA expert Dr. John P. Cooke told Healthline. “You write the code very quickly and pretty much encode in the RNA any protein that we want the cells to generate … If we can get that software into the cell, the cell will follow those instructions and make that protein for us.”
So far, exposing a person to an inactive form of the HIV virus has failed to provoke an immune response and scientists consider it too dangerous to infect an individual with a weakened form of the virus. Scientists also look to the immune system of those who have recovered from a virus in order to gain insight into how their immune system now functions. However, almost nobody has been able to successfully recover from being infected with HIV.
The leap in mRNA technology the past year has been a mixture of advances in the science of mRNA as well as the influx of money researchers received to create a vaccine for COVID-19.
On January 11, Moderna announced three new programs that will attempt to use mRNA technology to produce vaccines. The company now has 24 mRNA development programs.
“Even as we have shown that our mRNA-based vaccine can prevent COVID-19, this has encouraged us to pursue more-ambitious development programs within our prophylactic vaccines modality. Today, we are announcing three new vaccine programs addressing seasonal flu, HIV and the Nipah virus, some of which have eluded traditional vaccine efforts, and all of which we believe can be addressed with our mRNA technology,” Moderna CEO Stphane Bancel says in a statement.
Moderna held a promising trial last year for an HIV vaccine using mRNA technology. In the trial, monkeys given the vaccine had significant protection from the virus when exposed to it. Two vaccine candidates from Moderna are expected to begin human trials sometime in 2021.
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