Context
Biotech company Moderna, The Massachusetts-based American biotechnology company will begin human trials for its novel mRNA vaccine for HIV, following the highly successful production and rollout of the world’s first mRNA vaccine for Covid last year.
What is mRNA, and how do mRNA vaccines work?
- Messenger RNA (mRNA) is expected to work similar to the Covid-19 vaccine — by getting the body’s cells to produce the HIV virus’s spike protein triggering an immune response.
- mRNA provides a recipe that human cells can use to make proteins.
- After injection, the cells in arm muscles pick up the mRNA, make the protein, and display it on the cell's surface.
- Human’s immune system sees the protein and learns how to make an immune response against it.
The Study
- The study will enroll 56 participants uninfected with HIV.
- They will be divided into four groups to test the combinations of two versions of the vaccine, called-
- eOD-GT8 60mer mRNA Vaccine (mRNA-1644)
- Core-g28v2 60mer mRNA Vaccine (mRNA-1644v2-Core)
- The participants will receive the doses and will be monitored for adverse effects and signs of immune response after ten months or immunogenicity.
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Key-Points
- mRNA-1644 will be the first HIV mRNA vaccine to be trialled in humans.
- mRNA vaccines tricks the body into producing some of the viral proteins itself.
- They work by using mRNA, or messenger RNA, which is the molecule that essentially puts DNA instructions into action. Inside a cell, mRNA is used as a template to build a protein.
- mRNA-1644, is based on the same mRNA platform as Moderna’s highly effective Covid-19 jab, which is one of two of the only mRNA vaccines to be authorised anywhere in the world.
- The other is Pfizer-BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine.
Collaboration
- The vaccine is a collaboration between Moderna, the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF).
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What are the advantages over other vaccine strategies?
- Safety: Unlike live-attenuated or viral-vectored vaccines, mRNA is non-infectious and poses no concern for DNA integration—mainly because it cannot enter the nucleus which contains DNA.
- Production: mRNA can be quickly designed and scaled up, if necessary.
- Efficacy
