Moderna begins Phase 1 clinical trial of its mRNA HIV vaccine

The Moderna company announced this Monday that the dose has been administered to the first participant in a clinical trial of an experimental mRNA vaccine against HIV.

"Developing a vaccine that induces sustained protective levels of HIV-neutralizing antibodies in humans has been difficult to achieve. At Moderna, we believe that mRNA offers the opportunity to take a new approach to this challenge"commented the president of Moderna, Stephen Hoge.

With the launch of our second HIV vaccine trial, we are advancing our strategy to use multiple natively encoded HIV mRNA trimers and Leverage the power of our mRNA platform to accelerate the discovery of a protective HIV vaccine", he continued.

It is gratifying to see that the experience with mRNA as a critical vaccine platform against Covid-19 is now entering the field of HIV vaccine. "We are optimistic that this study will pave the way for continued use of mRNA in HIV," said Larry Corey, principal investigator at the HIV Vaccine Trials Network Leadership Operations Center. HIV, which is based at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (United States).

The trial is sponsored and funded by the Division of AIDS of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the United States (NIAID, for its acronym in English).

HIV is the virus responsible for acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), a lifelong progressive disease with no cure. Around the world, some 38 million people are currently living with HIV.

Moderna is currently advancing two preventative HIV vaccine strategies. In addition to this HIV mRNA vaccine trial with mRNA-1574, Moderna participates in the tests of the antigens of the vacuna against HIV mRNA-1644 and mRNA-1644v2-Core, which are being evaluated in a Phase I trial sponsored by IAVI and supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.