A new AIDS vaccine heads to clinical trials

ONE SILVER lining to the covid-19 pandemic has been the speed with which effective vaccines have been developed. Victims of other pandemics have not been so lucky. Three decades of attempts to create a vaccine against HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, have proved fruitless. The latest setback came on August 31st, when an experimental vaccine produced by Johnson & Johnson, an American pharmaceutical firm, flunked a clinical trial. One obstacle is HIV’s genetic slipperiness. The virus has a high mutation rate, which helps it adapt to evade both natural immune systems and artificial vaccines.

Undaunted, Moderna, a firm based in Massachusetts that has recently found fame by quickly coming up with a viable covid-19 jab, is planning to start human trials of a novel vaccine against HIV. Its researchers hope that the mRNA technology used to produce its covid-19 jab will succeed against HIV too, by creating a vaccine which the virus cannot easily dodge.