Clinical Trials Investigate Potential Of Therapeutic Vaccines For People With HIV

Clinical trials for several types of therapeutic HIV vaccines are currently ongoing or recruiting participants.

Therapeutic HIV vaccines work by enhancing the body’s natural immune response, helping to control HIV in people already infected with the virus.

This is in contrast to preventative vaccines, which are used in HIV-negative individuals to prevent infection.

Researchers hope therapeutic vaccines will decrease dependence on antiretroviral drugs, which must be taken for life and often have serious side effects.

“A vaccine that enhanced the body’s ability to control HIV and delayed or decreased the dependence on anti-HIV drugs would be a major breakthrough for HIV treatment,” said Dr. Melanie Thompson, a lead investigator of one of the HIV vaccine trials.

No therapeutic vaccines are currently approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration.

DNA Vaccines
DNA vaccines contain pieces of DNA into which copies of several viral genes have been inserted. When human cells take up the DNA, they produce proteins encoded in the viral genes.

Researchers hope that the body’s immune system will recognize these proteins as harmful foreign agents and mount a powerful protective response.

DNA vaccines are a relatively new idea, and their effectiveness has not been well studied yet, although preliminary clinical trials have usually found them to be safe.

A small Phase 1 clinical trial investigating a therapeutic HIV DNA vaccine from GeoVax Labs is currently recruiting participants.

To be eligible for the GeoVax study, participants must have begun antiretroviral treatment within six months of diagnosis with HIV/AIDS. Additionally, individuals who have been HIV-positive for up to six months, but are yet to begin treatment, may be eligible for enrollment in the study.

Participants will be monitored to determine the safety of the vaccine and strength of their immune response for up to 77 weeks. For this initial study, only 10 to 12 people will be enrolled in the trial.

So far, studies in HIV-positive primates treated with the vaccine soon after infection gave good results. Clinical trials will now see if these results extend to HIV-infected humans as well.

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Source: The AIDS Beacon