The introduction of the mRNA vaccine could be the key to suppressing the spread of Covid-19, but mRNA technology has also created a series of possibilities to treat other diseases as well. Moderna recently announced that they will be developing an HIV vaccine following its successes with the Covid-19 vaccine.
“The recent clinical achievements reported for the mRNA-based SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidates highlight the potential of this technology” said Kristie Bloom to TheBodyPro, a researcher in the gene therapy unit at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa.
“The cell-free production and flexibility to adapt the mRNA transcript means that novel HIV vaccines could be developed both to prevent and to treat HIV”, Bloom adds.
[ihc-hide-content ihc_mb_type=”block” ihc_mb_who=”unreg” ihc_mb_template=”3″ ]Since the start of the HIV epidemic over 75.7 million people have been infected with HIV, which prompted researchers to begin searching for an HIV vaccine back in 1984.
Despite the numerous years of intensive research, the search continues today as a viable HIV vaccine has yet to be identified. But with the recent successes of the Covid-19 vaccine, Moderna have identified and are developing two candidate HIV vaccines which could see first phase trials in the near future.
The implications of a successful HIV vaccine would no doubt significantly improve the lives of many people, especially those in Africa where the HIV epidemic runs rampant.
In November of 2020, Moderna promptly released the preliminary results for their mRNA based Covid-19 vaccine, which yielded a 94.5% efficacy rate. The very next month, the vaccine was approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and has since been authorized for use in Canada, the United Kingdom, and by the European Union.
With this great success, Moderna announced that their endeavors into mRNA technology will not stop at Covid-19 and aims to apply this technology to other infectious diseases, most notably HIV. “The uniquely challenging year of 2020 for all of society proved to be an extraordinary proof-of-concept period for Moderna” states CEO Stéphane Bancel in the event’s press release document.
“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 vaccine modalities” Bancel adds.
Although Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine was developed rapidly, it came with its own barriers and challenges. The same can be said about the development of an HIV vaccine, as researchers at Moderna continue to work on the two HIV candidate vaccines. However, hopes of a similar development time should not be expected.
“At the moment, I don’t think funding is necessarily the biggest bottleneck to an HIV vaccine breakthrough, although more funding never hurts.” says John Moore to The HuffPost, a professor at Weill Cornell Medicine and expert in microbiology and immunology.
“At the end of the day, it’s the fundamental differences in the biology of HIV and SARS-CoV-2 that make developing a vaccine so difficult.”[/ihc-hide-content]
