Study shows novel HIV vaccine regimen provides robust protection in non-human primates

A new study led by scientists at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) shows that an HIV-1 vaccine regimen, involving a viral vector boosted with a purified envelope protein, provided complete protection in half of the vaccinated non-human primates (NHPs) against a series of six repeated challenges with simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), a virus similar to HIV that infects NHPs. These findings are published online today in Science. Based on these pre-clinical data, the HIV-1 version of this vaccine regimen is now being evaluated in an ongoing Phase 1/2a international clinical study sponsored by Crucell Holland B.V., one of the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson. “We previously showed that adenovirus vector-based HIV-1 vaccine candidates offered partial protection against SIV when given alone,” said lead author Dan H. Barouch, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at BIDMC and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. The...