Promising Moderna Phase 1 mRNA HIV Vaccine halted for stupid reasons. It needs to restart. We need to take action.
This was a promising vaccine candidate, and was going to be the first attempt to use mRNA technology and then in Feb. or March 2024 it was halted and since then no news. #HIVVaxNow
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The reason for holding it up turned out to be reasonable.
However, I just had one article to rely on and I didn’t see the LGBTQXYZ+ media asking questions as to why, so I went with what was reported.
Even so, it isn’t clear what is next nor is it clear anyone is planning on what to do next.
We still need to push.
Early in 2024 very promising research into an HIV vaccine was stupidly stopped by bureaucratic politics.
The following is my best effort to find out what happened to an effort that looked extremely promissing as best I can. We shouldn’t be in a situation where we don’t clearly know what happened. I will update it as I find out more.
The article reporting on it was in Science, Vol. 383, Issue 6687, March 8, 2024, page 1044.
You can download the pdf of the page here.
https://www.science.org/doi/epdf/10.1126/science.adp0477
The article points out that:
Most of these skin problems quickly resolved and weren't severe enough to stop any trial,
And:
One of the most promising attempts to reinvigorate the stalled quest for an HIV vaccine has hit a snag that might seem minor but has major consequences: delaying the larger trials needed to show whether the concept works. [Boldface added.]
This rational for halting the test was infuriating.
Most of these skin problems quickly resolved and weren't severe enough to stop any trial, but researchers do not want to minimize them. “At a time when vaccine hesitancy is high, it is critically important not to dismiss urticaria as an unimportant side effect,” says Kimberly Blumenthal, an allergist at Massachusetts General Hospital. [Boldface added.]
Urticaria is skin rash.
Is this really a reason to halt trials? A promising vaccine trial was stopped because there are stupid people somewhere that might draw foolish conclusions. When there is a desparate need for a HIV vaccine, progress is halted because some people are stupid! This is infuriating.
A vital need for the health of the Gay community, the development of an urgently, desperately need vaccine is halted so that delulu anti-vaxxers won’t be alarmed.
Further it is 11 out of 60 that get these rashes. I don’t know, but I think most Gay people would be willing to risk having a week of skin rashes instead of a few days in exchange for HIV immunity. Gays would take the vaccine even if it was the case where 60 out of 60 got skin rashes and we needed to take 3 shots instead of two shots.
However, despite how urgently and desperately the Gay community needs an HIV, the mRNA vaccine program was halted.
One of the reasons given wasn’t foolish, but somewhat speculative and not valid reasons to stop.
Potentially more worrisome, however, would be if the problem is tied to a cumulative effect from multiple mRNA shots or the genetic background of the recipients, or if the HIV sequence itself were responsible for the welts and hives.
Again if the rash is tied to multiple shots, so what, getting a skin rash that isn’t serious and goes away in a few days, isn’t a reason to stop the project. Again, Gays would be quite willing to have rashes. They can figure out why there are rashes while or later after the HIV vaccine is released.
The explanation given in the article was somewhat vague as to why they are concerned. Given the urgency of this issue, we deserve a better explanation as to why this justifies a delay in getting an HIV vaccine.
I see a department looking to find something for it to do.
Given the importance of finding an HIV vaccine, it is puzzling that the halting of the vaccine development wasn’t major news in the LGBT press.
If an HIV vaccine is finally developed, the Gay community will be celebrating for days.
Current Status of the mRNA vaccine.
I am not finding any information on the current status.
The Moderna webpage. https://www.modernatx.com/en-US
Moderna has an overview called the mRNA pipeline where you can see the status of their vaccines. It is still at Phase 1 where it was a year ago.
There are two of them, mRNA-1644 and mRNA-1574.
https://www.modernatx.com/en-US/research/product-pipeline
This was the Moderna pipeline as saved at the Internet Archive on March 18, 2024. (Hit the refresh button after the accept cookies question pops up. Also, I denied cookies.) The HIV vaccines are still at Phase 1.
https://web.archive.org/web/20240318011038/https://www.modernatx.com/en-US/research/product-pipeline
Though comparison will show you that a lot of other vaccines are in the same phases they were in a year ago. It seems that major market vaccines are the ones moving, for example the Pandemic flu vaccine which went from Phase 2 to Phase 3 and the RSV vaccine went to be commercially released.
So I looked at another indicator what was happening, since I wasn’t hearing anything in the news.
https://www.modernatx.com/en-US/newsroom/news-and-media
I did a search for all news items with the term “HIV” and the latest is May 18, 2022.
Searching the entire Moderna website with their search engine has the latest item relating to HIV the 2023 Moderna letter to shareholders dated Jan. 2, 2024.
https://www.modernatx.com/search?initialQuery=HIV&filter=&sort=most-recent
There is a Virology 101 science page, dated May 22, 2024, but it just a basic short page with a video and has an error in which HIV is classified as a oncovirus rather than a retrovirus.
Looking at the 2023 letter to shareholders, HIV is mentioned.
Latent Franchise
We continued to develop vaccines against six latent and other viruses with unmet or underserved needs, including cytomegalovirus (CMV), Epstein-Barr virus, herpes simplex virus, varicella zoster virus, norovirus and HIV.
https://www.modernatx.com/en-US/media-center/all-media/blogs/moderna-2023-shareholder-letter
In the 2024 letter to shareholders, HIV isn’t mentioned.
Reading it through the entire 2024 letter, word searching it and examining closely the “Latent & Other Franchise” section there is no mention of HIV.
There is mentioned how they prioritized CMV and norovirus and examining the Moderna pipeline from a year ago and now they have progressed. Moderna is focused on getting intial products to market, and the U.S. government’s fussing got it deprioritized.
https://www.modernatx.com/en-US/media-center/all-media/blogs/moderna-2024-shareholder-letter
This is another reason to have mRNA vaccine research happening in more than one place and by one entity. Corporate strategies or government bureaucratic fussing can result in the urgently needed mRNA vaccine development just stopping.
The BRILLIANT project may not be as far long as the apparently stopped Moderna vaccine project, but it is at least moving.
It seems that the Moderna mRNA HIV vaccine program is now largely if not entirely stopped.
At this time it doesn’t seem that there is any progress on an mRNA HIV virus happening anywhere.
This should have been a major issue with the LGBTQ+ press starting in March 2024. It still doesn’t seem to be a concern with the major LGBTQ+ press or by the LGBTQ+ organizations.
We need to take action.
What the U.S. Government, that is the Trump administration need to do now is.
[1] Eliminate and cancel immediately any halts or stops or blocks by the U.S. government of the Moderna mRNA vaccine trials.
[2] Make sure that the federal health departments don’t needlessly halt development of this vaccine again. Of course we want a safe vaccine, but halting it because some people might have foolish thoughts or some department is wanting to take some position on some issue isn’t acceptable.
[3] Have an expeditious approval process by U.S. government for the vaccine’s release. Review of the data needs to be a priority and not delayed by bureaucratic procedures.
[4] Make sure Moderna doesn’t get blocked or bothered in their efforts to develop an HIV vaccine because of anti-vaxxer ideologies both within the federal government or by other groups and individuals.
[5] Have a procedure for minor risk testing. If there is a minor risk, are volunteers willing to take that risk?
[6] Strategize how to accelerate without serious risks to patients. In semiconductor processing there are procedures for release that allow for accelerated change, but mitigate risk.
[7] If there is a halt, the reasons for it need to be explained in detail with a plan to expeditiously resolve the issues involved.
[8] If Moderna won’t pursue expeditiously an mRNA HIV vaccine, take expeditious measures so that another group or organization is expeditiously pursuing an mRNA HIV vaccine.
AIDS is the horrible scourge of the Gay community globally. Other groups are afflicted by also. The campaign to find a vaccine needs to have a sense of urgency.
If an HIV vaccine is finally developed, the Gay community would be celebrating for days.
Special Interests against an HIV vaccine.
There is a lot of cash flow with AIDS. There are the cost of medicines, treatment, counseling, and safe sex instruction. If a cure for AIDS was found tomorrow, a lot of people would be out of work, lots of cash wouldn’t be flowing to those who get it now. There are revenues that finance entire companies.
With a vaccine, there wouldn’t be immediate unemployment, but there would be a steady decline in patients over time.
I am not saying there is any effort currently to block an HIV vaccine, I don’t know, likely this halt is due to sheer stupid bureaucratic politics, but I think we need to be aware that there are financial interests that would be impacted by a cure or a vaccine.
We need to be alert to the possibility.
I discuss this issue more in this post from Oct. 10, 2022.
Links have been submitted to the Internet Archive. https://web.archive.org/
#HIVVaxNow
