{"id":1026,"date":"2019-07-19T15:06:28","date_gmt":"2019-07-19T15:06:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/education\/?p=1026"},"modified":"2019-07-19T15:38:57","modified_gmt":"2019-07-19T15:38:57","slug":"hiv-vaccine-nears-clinical-trial-after-passing-key-safety-test","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/education\/hiv-vaccine-nears-clinical-trial-after-passing-key-safety-test\/","title":{"rendered":"HIV Vaccine Nears Clinical Trial After Passing Key Safety Test"},"content":{"rendered":"

Plans to take a <\/strong>HIV vaccine to clinical trial have just taken a big step forward, after a team of researchers developed a weakened form of the vaccine that appears to be just as effective as stronger strains.<\/strong><\/p>\n

For the past few years, scientists have been working on developing a vaccine for simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), which is very similar to HIV but infects monkeys rather than humans. The vaccine has been created from a modified version of the common herpes virus cytomegalovirus (CMV), which generates SIV proteins.<\/p>\n

Before any vaccine can be used on humans, it must be attenuated in order to stop it from being able to spread once inside the body. Non-attenuated CMV can be highly dangerous to those with a compromised immune system.<\/p>\n

To modify the virus, the researchers deleted a gene called Rh110, which stopped the virus from being able to replicate itself via a process called the lytic cycle. When applied to rhesus monkeys, this form of the vaccine was found to be 1,000 times less capable of spreading than the non-attenuated version. It was also not present in any of the monkeys\u2019 bodily excretions, and could not be transferred between individuals.<\/p>\n

Crucially, however, the vaccine provided the same level of protection as the stronger version, and eliminated SIV in 59 percent of the monkeys. The effects were also long-lasting, with nine of the 12 vaccinated monkeys remaining resistant to SIV three years later.<\/p>\n

The results have been published in two separate papers in the journal Science Translational Medicine, and while human clinical trials are likely to take several years, this research represents a massive leap forward in the quest to create a safe, effective HIV vaccine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Plans to take a HIV vaccine to clinical trial have just taken a big step forward, after a team of researchers developed a weakened form of the vaccine that appears to be just as effective as stronger strains. For the past few years, scientists have been working on developing a vaccine for simian immunodeficiency virus…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":823,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[223,293,222,277,18],"class_list":["post-1026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science-space","tag-health","tag-hiv","tag-medical","tag-medicine","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/57"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1026"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1026\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1027,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1026\/revisions\/1027"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}