The HIV Vaccine Landscape

Segment Description: Colleen Kelley, MD, MPH, associate professor at the Emory University School of Medicine, describes the current state of HIV vaccine efforts.

Interview Transcript (modified slightly for readability):

Kelley: We still don't have an HIV vaccine after 30 years, and we recently got some disappointing news from sub-Saharan Africa. A vaccine regimen that was very similar to the successful regimen that was used in Thailand several years back and modified a bit to fit the African epidemic was not effective at preventing HIV infection.

While that's disappointing, I think there is still hope. There are several other trials ongoing that may give us different results. So the Mosaico trial in the US and the Imbokodo trial in sub-Saharan Africa are just kind of getting started and enrolling and those are a different vaccine regimen that produce a different kind of immune response that we hope will show some successful results in reducing HIV incidence in addition to treating vaccines. We're also eagerly awaiting the results of the AMP trial in the US that looked at VRC01 monoclonal antibody, so in neutralizing antibody against HIV that was delivered by IV infusion every eight weeks to see if that was effective at reducing HIV incidence. That is a proof of concept that monoclonal antibodies used in humans can be effective as prevention interventions and that will really be a game changer once we see the results of that trial hopefully later this year.