Trials start of mRNA vaccine for HIV

First steps towards protection from the many and variable viral strains Volunteers in the US recently received the first experimental doses of a new type of HIV vaccine. Using Moderna’s mRNA platform, the vaccine has been developed in partnership with the International Aids Vaccine Initiative (IAVI). While huge amounts of development are still required to create a successful vaccine, the speed and flexibility of mRNA may accelerate the process. The new strategy first relies on a highly engineered protein to trigger immune system B cells to produce special broadly neutralising antibodies. ‘We need to induce antibodies that bind to the HIV spike and prevent it binding to the human target cells,’ says William Schief at Scripps Research, US, who developed the protein antigen (eOD-GT8 60mer) for this vaccine. While Sars-CoV-2 has tens of variants of its spike protein, each person infected with HIV has many more versions of the HIV surface protein. Previous vaccines could...