Possible HIV vaccine shows promise, researchers say

By Teddy Grant Published: April 8, 2021

Possible HIV vaccine shows promise, researchers say

A technician prepares COVID-19 coronavirus patient samples for testing at a laboratory in New York's Long Island. Wide scale testing is a critical part of tracking and containing infectious diseases. But the U.S. effort has been plagued by a series of missteps, including accuracy problems with the test kits the CDC sent to other labs and bureaucratic hurdles that slowed the entrance of large, private sector labs. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

Researchers said this week that a vaccine for HIV is a possibility after recent clinical trials were promising, according to ABC News.

The International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) and The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, conducted the research, according to the report.

“The vaccine showed success in stimulating the production of rare immune cells needed to start the process of generating antibodies against the fast-mutating virus; the targeted response was detected in 97 percent of participants who received the vaccine,” the organizations said in a statement to MoneyControl News.

“These are very early studies. But nonetheless, they are provocative,” a professor of preventative medicine and infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Dr. William Schaffner, told ABC News.

Schaffner, who didn’t participate in the study, added, “this is a very innovative approach to developing a vaccine that hasn’t been done before.”

IAVI and Scripps Research is partnering with Moderna to develop and test an mRNA-based vaccine, according to MoneyControl.

“Using mRNA technology could significantly accelerate the pace of HIV vaccine development,” the companies told MoneyControl in a statement.