Johnson (JNJ) of the United States recently announced that patients who evaluated the IIb phase proof-of-concept efficacy study Imbokodo (HVTN 705/HPX2008) of a prophylactic HIV vaccine have been enrolled. The study is evaluating a mosaic vaccine program to prevent HIV-1 infection among 2600 young women between the ages of 18 and 35 in five countries in southern Africa, where women and girls are at high risk of contracting HIV.
The Imbokodo study is the first effectiveness study of the mosaic prophylactic vaccine, testing whether the vaccine can safely and effectively reduce new HIV infection rates. The prophylactic vaccine, based on the mosaic concept, is designed as a “global” vaccine that can be widely used around the world to prevent infection with a variety of HIV strains that are responsible for the HIV pandemic. The researchers predict that the study is expected to produce preliminary results by 2021.
The vaccine, which uses AdVac adenoviral vector platform and PER.C6 production cell line technology, consists of four components (4 valence) chimeric adenoviral serotype 26 vector (Ad26.Mos4.HIV) and soluble protein. In preclinical studies, the vaccine showed an effective rate of 66% in non-primates. The results of the I/II phase study, released earlier in 2017, showed that the vaccine triggered an antibody response in 100% of the study participants.
Dr. Paul Stoffels, Vice Chairman and Chief Scientific Officer of the Executive Committee of Johnson, said: “The full inclusion of patients with Imbokodo is an important step in our efforts to advance a universal vaccine that will ultimately help reverse the epidemic of HIV. The development of a safe and effective vaccine has proved to be one of the biggest public health challenges of our time.”
Although significant progress has been made in the fight against HIV, more than 35 million people worldwide are still infected with the virus. In 2017, 1.8 million people were newly infected with HIV, and nearly 1 million died of AIDS. In sub-Saharan Africa, young women between the ages of 15 and 24 are twice as likely to be infected with HIV, according to the United Nations Programme on HIV / AIDS. Therefore, the development of an effective vaccine against HIV is the primary task of global scientific research.