Johnson & Johnson to Begin Human Trials on Potential HIV Vaccine; All You Need to Know

HIV, which causes AIDS has remained one of the biggest challenges as no cure has yet been found for the same. Every once in a while, a new potential HIV vaccine arrives on the horizon and we dream of a future where curing the disease becomes a reality, but most studies remain confined to Petri dishes and as science journal studies.

However, a new development sees Johnson & Johnson announcing that Janssen Vaccines & Prevention B.V., one of its Janssen Pharmaceutical

Companies, together with global partners are preparing to launch Mosaico, the first large-scale Phase 3 efficacy study of Janssen’s investigational mosaic-based HIV-1 preventive vaccine.

Notably, Janssen's mosaic vaccine is designed as a global vaccine with the aim of preventing infections from the wide range of viral strains responsible for the HIV pandemic.

Here's everything we know about the vaccine thus far:

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the HIV Vaccine Trials

Network (HVTN) based at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command (USAMRDC) are joining forces with Janssen to advance the potential global vaccine.

The public-private partnerships plans for Mosaico will be described in more detail at the 10th IAS Conference on HIV Science (IAS 2019) in Mexico City, along with new late-breaking data regarding the mosaic-based vaccine regimen to be studied in Mosaico.

These components have been designed to bolster the body’s immunity so they can fight against different strands of the virus.

The new vaccine has a good record on animals, working on two-thirds of test subjects.

Even though it is not a 100 per cent cure, it promises to be a very promising development.

The vaccine by Johnson & Johnson will be tested on 3,800 men from Europe, North America, and South America.

Participants of this human trial are expected to receive six shots of the vaccine over four sessions and the results can come out as early as 2023.

Mosaico will be the second, and largest, efficacy study for Janssen’s investigation HIV vaccine.

The first efficacy study, the Phase 2b clinical trial known as Imbokodo (HPX2008/HVTN 705), is currently evaluating a mosaic-based vaccine regimen in 2,600 young women (aged 18-35) across five southern African countries.