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The decades-long quest to develop a HIV vaccine has been dealt another major blow, with the 'last true candidate in development' failing to prevent infections any better than a placebo in late-stage clinical trials. The multinational Mosaico study, which began in 2019 and involved more than 3,900 volunteers, was investigating a four-shot HIV vaccine for cisgender men and transgender people who have sex with cisgender men and/or transgender people. As the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) reported last week, the trial was stopped after a planned data review by the study's independent data and safety monitoring...

A full weekend of protest in Bainbridge Island, Washington. A round the clock demonstration at the home of Democrat Governor Jay Inslee who's imposed coronavirus restrictions and controls... Four people stabbed two police officers hurt following ANITFA attacks on supporters of President Trump Saturday evening in Washington... One person shot and four police officers hurt as ANTIFA attacked pro-Trump demonstrators in Olympia, Washington yesterday... The Proud Boys supporter of President Trump arrested and accused of shooting an ANTIFA member yesterday in Olympia, Washington identified as Forest Machala, a federal government employee... "Achtung" Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel pushing for a new...

Analysis identifies target for immune response that could improve AIDS vaccines. HIV is finally revealing its weak spots to researchers, bringing an effective vaccine against AIDS closer to reality. A paper published in Nature today1 sheds light on how a vaccine can turn the immune system against the invading virus and so offer protection from infection. The results are also being presented at the AIDS Vaccine 2012 conference in Boston, Massachusetts, this week. The findings help to explain the results from a clinical trial of an AIDS vaccine that have puzzled researchers since they were published three years ago2. The...

Spanish researchers found that 22 of 24 healthy people (92 per cent) developed an immune response to HIV after being given their MVA-B vaccine. Professor Mariano Esteban, head researcher on the project at the National Biotech Centre in Madrid, said of the jab: "It is like showing a picture of the HIV so that it is able to recognise it if it sees it again in the future." The injection contains four HIV genes which stimulate T and B lymphocytes, which are types of white blood cells. Prof Esteban explained: "Our body is full of lymphocytes, each of them programmed...

The sponsors of the largest ever HIV vaccine trial yesterday hailed a "historic" moment as they formally announced the trial's results at an international AIDS vaccine meeting in Paris. The results received rapturous applause from an audience of more than 1,000 HIV researchers. But some scientists are much more sceptical of the findings, arguing that the response of the HIV research community, long deprived of any good news from vaccine trials, is based more on hope than on rigorous science.The US$119-million phase III trial, sponsored by the health ministry of Thailand and the US Army, started in Thailand in 2003....

A team of scientists in the US has discovered two new antibodies that could lead to an HIV vaccine. Researchers from the Scripps Institute in California, the International Aids Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) and US-based biotech companies Theraclone Sciences and Monogram Biosciences discovered these two broadly neutralising antibodies using high-throughput screening of serum from patients infected with HIV.When people are first infected with HIV, they produce antibodies that are specific to the infected strain, but a few years later some start to make antibodies active against other strains of the virus - known as broadly neutralising antibodies. 'There is a huge variability in...

A much-heralded H.I.V. vaccine has failed to work in a large clinical trial, dealing another serious setback to efforts to stop the AIDS epidemic. The vaccine’s developer, Merck, said yesterday that it had halted test vaccinations after the vaccine failed to prevent infection or reduce the severity of infection among volunteers who became infected during the trial. The trial was closely watched because experts considered the vaccine one of most promising to be tested on people so far. This was also the first of a new class of H.I.V. vaccine to get this far in clinical trials. The failure of...

Associated Press Companies will wait for federal research, AIDS chief predicts WASHINGTON - In an unusually candid admission, the federal chief of AIDS research says he believes drug companies don't have an incentive to create a vaccine for HIV and are likely to wait to profit from it after the government develops one. And that means the government has had to spend more time focusing on the processes that drug companies ordinarily follow in developing new medicines and bringing them to market. "We had to spend some time and energy paying attention to those aspects of development because the private...

Seattle Times medical reporter An experimental HIV vaccine, which scientists say is the most promising in 20 years, has had such good results recently that researchers are doubling the number of volunteers involved in the trials. Scientists in Seattle and other cities in the international HIV Vaccine Trials Network have found much stronger immune responses than earlier tests showed. They've also discovered that the vaccine may protect against more types of HIV, giving it possible wider application than originally believed. "We're really excited about it ... It's the one out in front," said Dr. Julie McElrath, network lab program director,...