HIV Vaccine Ready For Clinical Trials

amigoro writes with the happy news that a possible vaccine against HIV is nearing readiness for clinical trials. The compound could provide a 'double whammy' by not only inoculating the patient against future infection, but destroying an HIV infection in progress. "The vaccine is an artificial virus-like particle whose outer casing consists of the TBI (T- and B cell epitopes containing immunogen) protein constructed by the researchers combined with the polyglucin protein. This protein contains nine components stimulating different cells of the immune system: both the ones that produce antibodies and the ones that devour the newcomer."

But what if youv got the AIDS?

[CodyRazor (1108681)]

...not HIV but full blown aids?

Re:

[xero314 (722674)]

It is possible to have HIV without having full-blown AIDS (the qualification for the disease is to have a certain quota of viral particles in a sample of your blood.)

The definition of AIDS is having all the associated symptoms and being HIV positive. This is what I mean by HIV and AIDS being associated only by definition. If someone has all the symptoms of AIDS, CD4+ T Lymphocyte count, but is not HIV positive then they are not labeled as having AIDS. This has only been true since the acceptance of the link between HIV and AIDS.

Re:

[balloonhead (589759)]

AIDS is simply HIV infection to the point where HIV has suppressed the immune system enough to cause an AIDS-defining illness (essentially an illness, usually infection, which would not normally happen in an immunocompetent individual), or the CD4 count (a kind of immune cell) is low enough to infer immunocompromise. Hardly definition by association.

The definition essentially separates HIV with no symptoms and HIV advanced enough to cause symptoms. Medically, it's quite important - someone with AIDS can hav

he's kind of correct

[r00t (33219)]

AIDS and HIV were once considered separate. The definition of AIDS was modified to require HIV.

That sucks. What about all the people with Aquired Immunodeficiency Syndromes from other causes? There are chemicals that can do it, and many other causes as well. Now that the definition of AIDS has been modified, do these people no longer have Aquired Immonodeficiency Syndromes? They're all healthy and OK now?

Furthermore, if that's all AIDS means anymore, why do we even need the term? For other infections, we don't have a separate name. If you are infected with tuberculosis and then start coughing, we don't change the description to Aquired Coughing Syndrome (ACS).

Re:But what if youv got the AIDS?

[Puff of Logic (895805)]

Retrovirus contain RNA which through reverse transcription modifies the hosts DNA. Large portions of DNA are useless garbage only there as place holders.

I'm not sure that our relatively rudimentary understanding of genetics is capable of supporting this assertion. While introns are certainly excised during transcription, to suggest that they, and other non-coding sequences, are "useless garbage" is probably not a scientific viewpoint. While it may seem that non-coding portions of DNA simply serve as placeholders at our currently level of understanding, it is perhaps possible that these repeating sequences are part of a secondary code that serves a useful (but as yet unclear) function. IANAGeneticist, but I believe that the jury is still out on the concept of "junk DNA".

Of course, it's entirely possible that the code is indeed useless, but that would seem to go against the tendency of evolution to be frugal.

Re:

[DMUTPeregrine (612791)]

I recall an article recently that showed that nearly 80% of the "junk" DNA is actually involved in feedback loops controlling the activation of other DNA and such. There's probably very little junk, we just don't see what everything does yet.

Re:But what if youv got the AIDS?

[TheRaven64 (641858)]

evolution occurs by selective breeding, not by viruses modifying our DNA. do you think monkeys caught the virus to become human one day and started walking upright?

No. Evolution is the combination of two processes:

• Mutation.
• Survival of the fittest.

Mutation can be caused by a number of processes, including transcription errors in mitosis, radiation, retroviral infection, etc. After mutation you have a member of a species with slightly different abilities to the others. If this difference confers a survival advantage (or, more accurately, a mating advantage), then it will be passed on a lot, and result in the majority of the species possessing the advantage.

Re:But what if youv got the AIDS?

[timmarhy (659436)]

The moment you mentioned colloidal silver you exposed yourself as a bullshit artist. "Colloidal silver products can have serious side effects"

"Claims made about the effectiveness of colloidal silver products for numerous diseases are unsupported scientifically."

http://nccam.nih.gov/health/alerts/silver/index.ht m [nih.gov] The fact that HIV results in full blown AIDS has been known for 20+ years. it's a testable fact.

I infact whole heartedly invite you and any other pricks proclaiming that treating HIV is a waste of time to take a trip to africa and fuck a few hookers and see if colloidal silver treatments go well.

Re:

[timmarhy (659436)]

"There is more money to be made controlling the disease with a daily regiment of drugs."

i really hate that bullshit fucking myth. i don't know who started it, but their a stupid douche bag.

are you seriously suggesting drug companys are going to run out of sick people, or illnesses to treat? To prove my point, i will use the example of small pox. small pox is a lethal infection that has been wiped out in the world population through vaccinations. by your logic, drug companys would not have manufactured the

Re:

[Ginger Unicorn (952287)]

The trouble with the line of reasoning (regarding supression of an AIDS vaccine) is the assumption there is one amorphous "big pharma". "big pharma" consists of hundreds of different companies. If one of them found a cure for AIDS they would be insane not to release it. Because if the technology and science had got to that stage, sooner or later one of their competitors is going to replicate the feat one way or another. The PR cachet for being the company that cures AIDS would be utterly priceless.

This do

Re:But what if youv got the AIDS?

[Znork (31774)]

"It would still apply even if the company in question was run by a total sociopath."

Considering the extent to which pharmas withhold treatment from dying people, (backed by WTO threats, patent manipulation, WIPO lobbyists, etc) I'd say it's quite obvious they could be classified as total sociopaths.

And really, a vaccine, or a cure, for AIDS would be a short-lived media bonus; when was the last time you heard anything about whatever companies created various vaccines (apart from allegations of causing things like autism, or for needlessly encouraging tax-financed and uncessary vaccinations)?

The thing is, if you analyze it, the entire economy of patent incentives is based on the ability to _deny_ everyone the right to produce a certain substance. The worse the consequences, the higher the price can go. Patents dont generate a lot of money for curing or preventing disease; they generate the maximum level of revenue when they set the price so high that they _deny_ a certain subset of customers access, and deny that subset of customers the right to buy the medicine from anyone else. (And please, dont give me the 'but they need the money to research' crap; the money is largely wasted on marketing, administration and inefficient production; we'd get five times the research for what we're paying today if we outright just paid for it and scrapped medical patents).

The very foundation of the system is so ethically corrupt that it's no wonder the pharmas are the way they are.

Personally I dont doubt for a second that they'd simply bury any substance (reorganize, change strategic direction) that appeared to actually have a chance at curing something they were selling a symptom treater for.

Re:But what if youv got the AIDS?

[tloh (451585)]

insightful???

I think not.

Not everyone who gets AIDS can afford drug therapy. The vast majority of new infections in 3rd world countries will most certainly not engage in treatment. Drug companies are only making money off "daily regiments" by bleeding dry a very small minority of AIDS sufferers.

Now think about a vaccine. If a viable vaccine is released, *EVERYONE* gets immunized. Get the picture? Not just rich HIV+ westerners Even those who are poor, even those who *DON'T HAVE THE DISEASE* will likely get immunized via global public campaigns of the type that eradicated smallpox. After having identified AIDS as a major factor in geo-political instability, you can bet that the UN (among others) is going to make a very good effort to pump money into any viable efforts to halt/reverse the spread of this disease.

No money to be made? only a fool would walk away from this.

I hear the cynics say this type of thing an awful lot and it just makes no sense. Has there been any actual real life case of pharmaceutical intentionally siting on a cure due to profit motives? Seriously, I genuinely want to learn about historic examples that justify this kind of fear.

Re:

[Timbotronic (717458)]

Has there been any actual real life case of pharmaceutical intentionally sitting on a cure due to profit motives?

There was a lot of resistance when a simple cure was found for stomach ulcers. Barry Marshall [wikipedia.org] eventually won a Nobel Prize for proving that Helicobacter pylori bacteria was the cause of most stomach ulcers but it took him years to do it.

There's some good background on it in this interview [achievement.org]. It gives a pretty good insight into what happens when you challenge the conventional wisdom. The medical community were extremely sceptical and resistant to his ideas. There was no great conspiracy to discredit him, i

Re:But what if youv got the AIDS?

[Dan Ost (415913)]

Who has more clout, insurance companies or pharmaceutical companies?

A cure would save the insurance companies lots of money.

You can participate in the clinical trials now!

[Spyrus (633357)]

http://vrc.nih.gov/clintrials/clinstudies.htm [nih.gov] These are ongoing safety trials at the National Institutes of Health.

Sad..

[somersault (912633)]

People are just making crass jokes and whining rather than actually recognising that this is a great step in the right direction for finding a cure/prevention for AIDs. I hope that all the cynicism about drug companies ensuring it never gets out is unfounded...

Re:Sad..

[balloonhead (589759)]

Abstinence is not 100% effective.

Coupled with:
- not being born to an HIV positive mother
- not sharing needles when injecting drugs
- not receiving tainted blood product transfusions
- not being bitten, scratched or otherwise suffering an infectious injury from a carrier
- not sustaining a needlestick injury if you are a healthcare worker from an HIV carrier
- not partaking in lower (but still not zero-) risk sexual activities (e.g. oral sex)
- not being exposed via other means (e.g. blood injuries in sports)

there are probably a few others I haven't thought of, but stop being so sanctimonious. There are a lot of people out there who contracted HIV through no fault of their own - one of the largest groups were haemophiliacs before the disease was even known about.

Re:

[budcub (92165)]

The vows of abstinence break more easily than any condom

Re:

[Daniel Dvorkin (106857)]

The technique for the prevention of AIDs is already well known and well proven. It's got a 100% effective prevention rate.

It's called abstinence.

This is not true; does the name Kimberly Bergalis ring a bell?

It is also true, of course, that the majority of infections are directly traceable to either sexual activity or IV drug use. Leaving aside the fact that a lot of people may be infected by partners to whom they're faithful and who they simply don't know are engaging in risky activity on the side ... so w

Re:

[turgid (580780)]

It's called abstinence.

But it only works properly if you wear a special magic ring [guardian.co.uk].

Always check the article source...

[Liberaltarian (1030752)]

Anyone else rather skeptical of the origins of the article?

1. Google News isn't showing anything else on this (aside from this very /. post!)
2. The claims it is making about the vaccine are astounding and are, unless you have a paid subscription to the single medical journal article referenced, unverifiable. Neither are there any quotes attributed to anyone.
3. The site in question is not even a hard news site; it appears to however be chock full of dressed up press releases by non-profits.

As promising as this "article" may read, there's no evidence that we should take these claims seriously.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a subscription:

http://pastebin.com/f406eb7f9 [pastebin.com]

Re:Always check the article source...

[flashmorbid (890326)]

The page itself is pretty obviously not a high traffic news site; i almost mistook it for a genric squatter site. This is all goooogle turned up http://www.citeulike.org/article/1423027 [citeulike.org] (that's not a squatter page either). The link from TFA is pretty legit, http://www.springerlink.com/content/h0u280742k2530 6p/ [springerlink.com]. Clearly a paper was written in some obscure Russian science journal and reprinted in english, and then this article surfaces out of the blue about said paper. There wouldn't be any quotes because the only source is the paper itself. Since the paper itself costs money to look at, and I don't know anything about the source journal, or how thorough its peer reviews are (not could I find anything out except from that one link from TFA), it's at least within the realm of possibility that the paper is exaggerated or even totally bogus. But jeez, look at all those names.

Re:Yes, please tell them to wake me...

[buswolley (591500)]

Peer Review? It preliminary research was published in a peer reviewed journal. I found it in PubMed and gave it a read. I didn't understand much though, but on first glance it looks legit...as far as it goes. I mean, the results are promising but preliminary.

Shweet

[Aqua OS X (458522)]

Slashdot: Curing AIDS once a month since 1997.

Re:Shweet

[EnsilZah (575600)]

Don't be silly, Slashdot doesn't cure AIDS.
It just reduces your chances of exposure.

Not the first...

[Short Circuit (52384)]

According to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], there are 17 candidates in phase I trials, four in phase I/II, and one in phase III.

That same article mentions that there is a great degree of diversity in HIV, meaning one HIV vaccine won't protect against all strains.

Pessimistic about this...

[Guppy (12314)]

As someone who has actually worked on an HIV vaccine (a plasmid-based DNA vaccine), I have to caution that the field is a graveyard of failed attempts, ranging from traditional vaccine methods a century old, to exotic cutting-edge variants. There is considerable skepticism that an HIV vaccine (even given a very elastic definition of "vaccine") is even possible, in part based on the apparently complete absence of any "natural" sterilizing immunity. At best, there exists a small population of non-progressors who are able to hold the virus at stalemate due to genetic variations in certain receptors, a mechanism that seems unhelpful as far as vaccines goes (although relevant to drugs, specifically entry-inhibitors).

While VLPs (virus-like particles) are certainly a promising vaccine technology (the cervical cancer vaccine that's been in the news recently is VLP-based), I really am pessimistic that it is the solution to the substantial problems that any working HIV vaccine would have to overcome. At this point, I don't think anything will work short of somehow granting a patient's immune system innate resistance to HIV through some kind of gene therapy approach (there actually are people working on this sort of approach, but gene therapy as a whole has a long way to go).

The temporal continum has burped

[Whuffo (1043790)]

This article would have been timely (but no more accurate) a couple of years ago. The vaccine showed great promise, but the clinical trials were a flop. The drug was written off; the company lost a bundle.

Mumble mumble making a vaccine for a polymorphic virus mumble - wish I hadn't bought that company's stock...

The day they come out with a cure for AIDS.

[pcgabe (712924)]

I dunno how much AIDS scare y'all, but I got a theory - the day they come out with a cure for AIDS, guaranteed, one-shot cure, on that day, there's gonna be fscking in the streets, man.

'It's over! Who're you? C'mere! What's your name, baby? No, it's over, yeah, woo-hoo!'

Man, if you can't get laid on that day, cut it off.

Bill Hicks [youtube.com]

Re:

[Spyrus (633357)]

This isn't a cowpox vaccine -- it does not contain any living or dead viral material. Read the article, please. You won't get HIV or AIDS from a synthetic protein.

Re:

[icegreentea (974342)]

What virus? if what the article says is correct (and im understanding it properly), the vaccine is a "virus-like particle" which has the major HIV protein markers and coatings, that are common across all strains of HIV (but lacks any actual RNA to inject into cells). The marker's will hopefully trigger the immune system to build resistance. Now that thats out of the way, this sounds kinda fishy. It's one thing to come up with a vaccine, but it also claims to be a cure for HIV infections that have already ta

Re:hmm...

[thePsychologist (1062886)]

America isn't the world. With HIV being such a high profile disease, there is no way an effective vaccine will be slowed or stopped by politics and bullshit.

Re:

[Propaganda13 (312548)]

there is no way an effective vaccine will be slowed or stopped by politics and bullshit.

what?

Re:

[SageMusings (463344)]

The pharmaco can be guilty of violating the DMCA if they can be shown to have puzzled out the inner workings of a virus Nature has created then circumvent it for monetary gain.

Re:hmm...

[westlake (615356)]

With the price of a year's treatment for AIDS in America approaching or exceeding $100k, I wonder how long it will be before this vaccine is 1. killed, 2. publicly smeared by pharmacos NOT producing it, or 3. price jacked to infinity. I hope it's none of the above, but....

How about we begin by naming a effective vaccine that was killed by the drug companies? How about in reporting on an AIDS we link to something more persuasive than a blog? National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases: Ongoing HIV vaccine trials [nih.gov]

Re:hmm...

[chuckymonkey (1059244)]

Look, I'm not being naive about this. When it comes to your run of the mill diseases such as restles legs, baldness, chronic heartburn, yeah Big Pharma is going to squeeze you for all your worth. However when it comes to the truly life threatening, the stuff that will, not may, but will kill you they aren't so stone hearted as you seem to believe. Case in point, my mother is dying from bone cancer. There is no cure and a very very very small chance that she is going to live long enough for her grandkids to get to know her. The oh so Evil money grubbing Big Pharma of your world gives her the medication that she needs to have a chance at surviving. They don't charger her a penny, and it's not cheap therapy. Each pill is over 50US dollars(we live in the US by the way), they know that there is going to be no return on that investment since she can't afford the medication but they give it anyway. Sure there may be some ulterior motive, but really I doubt it because no matter what angle I look at it I don't see how they are really going to get anything out of it whether she lives or dies other than the fact that if she lives it'll be one more statistic for their success charts which really don't prove that it was that medication that cured her. Why do you think that the medication is so expensive here in the States? They have to make money somehow so for the people that can afford it, even marginally they are going to charge you through the nose. However all that extra money you put in sometimes goes on to help someone that would not have received that kind of aid in the first place. So no, in cases with life threatening diseases they're not always about the money, sometimes it really is about helping someone who needs(not wants) it. If this works and that's a strong if the government is going to really pony up some money for it, because for some things they really don't have any other choice.

Re:

[karmatic (776420)]

I'm not going to badmouth them, and I think that providing medicine to those who cannot afford it is a good thing.

As for an "ulterior motive", there may be some tax advantages to it, and at the very least, it's not much of a cost. R&D and advertising are a good part of the cost of a pill; there's no profit in selling to those who can't afford it. Many drugs have a very low cost per-pill to produce, and by not passing on the advertising/R&D costs, the free medication won't make much of a difference

Re:"Not only" is wrong way round

[grogdamighty (884570)]

If the current infection isn't destroyed, what is the use of future immunity? And does 'immunity' even have meaning in that case?

Actually, *most* vaccines on the market are designed to produce a response against future exposure rather than treating a current infection - that's exactly what immunity means in medical terms. It would be worthless to immunize against most diseases after they've been contracted anyway, since the body has already been presented with immunogens and should be developing a response; HIV/AIDS is a special case because of A) its success at avoiding effective immune response and B) its ability to destroy the immune response.

An HIV vaccine would, depending on price and risks, most likely be distributed to those who do not yet have the disease but may be at high risk. Since some of the highest risk patients (people who engage in unprotected sex and IV drug users) are less likely to go tell their doc they need it, let's hope it gets cheap and safe enough to make it a mandatory childhood shot!

Re:"Not only" is wrong way round

[kripkenstein (913150)]

It would be worthless to immunize against most diseases after they've been contracted anyway, since the body has already been presented with immunogens and should be developing a response

Just a comment: As far as I know, the only disease for which post-infection immunization works is rabies [wikipedia.org]. This is apparently because rabies travels so slowly, immunization can protect the central nervous system before the virus spreads there, even days after being bitten by a contagious animal.

Re:He who gets AIDS deserves to get AIDS...

[bcreason (1120111)]

Tell that crap to a medical worker who got aids from an accidental needle prick or the woman who got it from her husband. Sanctimonious SOB.

Re:He who gets AIDS deserves to get AIDS...

[Knuckles (8964)]

Tell that crap to a medical worker who got aids from an accidental needle prick ...

Or, indeed, to someone who got AIDS from having some fun and sleeping around. WTF is wrong with that?

nothing wrong with sleeping around...

[Animaether (411575)]

but there's everything wrong with doing so irresponsibly. HIV isn't the only STD out there, after all.

If you're one of those people who 'sleep around', do so cleanly, do so safely, keep track of who you sleep with, get tested regularly; and if you do get tested positive for any STD, tell those who you slept with since the previous test (+ some time, due to incubation times) to get tested as well, as it is likely that 1. you got it from one of them* and 2. you gave it to some of them.

If you can't bring yourself to act responsibly, then I'm sorry - I can't bring up much sympathy for you when you do get an STD.

* assuming you didn't get the STD through blood contact/kissing**
** yes, the virus involved with a cold sore ( herpes labialis / HSV-1 ) will happily live in those other mucous warm areas, albeit extremely rare for it to travel southward. Similarly, genital herpes ( herpes genitalis / HSV-2 ) will happily nestle in the mouth.

Re:

[Tatarize (682683)]

It's pretty sad, I so want this to work not because it will save millions of lives but because it will piss of the religious right.

Re:nothing wrong with sleeping around...

[Tatarize (682683)]

Really? You mean the missionaries who go into AIDS epidemic regions and tells the people of the evils of condom use? My point isn't that the religious right are evil, but that they tend to, within the United States, love HIV. They view it God's punishment against promiscuity and homosexuality. If you claim that you've never seen some tool arguing that you shouldn't do something because HIV will get you, you're kidding yourself.

So we have the actual harm of discouraging condoms in regions where that kind of activity would be tantamount to murder. And we have the homegrown people who love to preach the evils of sex and homosexuality (see above in this thread). If this worked, it would piss off the latter group, and prevent the harm of the former group.

My aunt spend a good number of her years at an orphanage she founded in Africa taking in AIDS babies. My hope for a cure has nothing to do with pissing women like her off, it's these sort of AIDS is God's Gift People, who really will be crying bloody murder that I want to see the faces of. I want to laugh as their favorite disease is ripped out from under them by science. The very first post on this thread is this sort of sanctimonious bullshit I want crushed.

Saving the lives of millions of people is a good bonus, but I really want to see these disease lovers get punched in the face. The same sort of thing happened when antibiotics starting curing other STDs, they got all pissy because they needed that disease for their God punishments.

Re:He who gets AIDS deserves to get AIDS...

[TheGreatHegemon (956058)]

Indeed. This strikes incredibly close to home, actually. My mother is currently a nurse. Once while drawing blood from a lady, the lady went psycho and blood ended up spraying into my mother's eye. Why were they drawing blood? She had common symptoms of AIDs. Those next few days were hell for the entire family (First, the lady refused to give blood again for testing, and second the labs still process it at the normal rate, despite the fact it happened on the job), thankfully it turned out said crazy lazy did NOT have AIDs or HIV. Could you fairly have cursed a faithful wife and mother to AIDs through such a silly claim? Furthermore, what's wrong with sleeping around, anyway? I shouldn't just have to defend it with my own mother...

Re:He who gets AIDS deserves to get AIDS...

[init100 (915886)]

AIDs

Just a question, what do you think AIDS means? AIDS is not plural of AID, and thus calling it AIDs is wrong. AIDS expands to Acquired Immuno-Deficiency Syndrome, so either capitalize every letter or capitalize nothing.

Re:

[balloonhead (589759)]

Being gay might not increase your chances of getting HIV (-> AIDS), but having gay sex might. The reasons are:
  - more tissue trauma in receptive anal sex
  - more promiscuity in gay community in general

HIV has recently become more transmissible during vaginal intercourse too (possibly through its fairly rapid evolution) though so it may catch up, but until the straight community becomes as promiscuous as the gay one, the transmission rate will remain lower.

Re:Woohoo!

[WindBourne (631190)]

The first cases of AIDS were associated with gay men

That is false. I think that you mean that the first cases detected were with gay's. The first cases were shown to come from Africa and traveled around via hetro sexuals. It was seen first in the gays, because of the liberal attitudes in bath houses of the 70's and our attitudes of gays back then (most were married).

Re:Never ceases to amaze me..

[mnemotronic (586021)]

... "unprotected sex". Yea. And rape. And being born to a mother with AIDS. Stupid kid. Shoulda been born in Sweden, not sub-Saharan Africa, which has 72% of the world's AIDs/HIV cases (HIV & AIDS Africa [rebirth.co.za]). It's hard for the light of compassion to shine through the cloak of prejudice.