New HIV vaccine shows unprecedented success in preclinical study

The most interesting point of the article for me is that this vaccine appears to be a series of shots which act as a curriculum for the immune system. Each one slightly different and targeting a different stage of B-cell development. I've never thought of vaccine series working like that, so it was a new and impressive idea.

While HIV vaccine research is an exciting field, it's worth pointing out that halting HIV transmission is, practically speaking, a solved problem with oral and injectable reverse transcriptase inhibitors. The ongoing loss of life and health due to HIV could be stopped if we cared enough to invest resources in wide-scale PrEP availability and public health education. Waiting for an HIV vaccine is the domain equivalent of hoping fusion power will solve our energy needs. Other solutions exist already; we just have to use them.

The actual paper - never trust press releases from authors' institutions: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10837-5

Peer review files: https://media.springernature.com/original/springer-static/es...

Independent article covering it: https://cen.acs.org/pharmaceuticals/vaccines/hiv-vaccine-can...

Phase I trials happening now. Godspeed to them. It’s where most HIV vaccines die

Tested on rhesus macaques. Worked well for 44% of them.

It's a positive step, but still a fair way off for humans.

Can anyone explain why the body doesn’t just naturally make lots of These broadly neutralising antibodies?

It seems like they’d be so useful - so there must be a good reason there aren’t lots of them normally?

I have to admit that given how many times we have been here, I struggle with being excited about any news about a HIV vaccine until we see results from humans. Just way too many times of hope.

That being said, I don't understand enough to parse this very buzzword heavy release. Is this fundamentally different than the every 6 month vaccine we have now and is a more traditional vaccine or is it just continuing on that trend?

I am sure in some countries this vaccine will be made mandatory for all teenagers because the assumption is they will have unprotected sex, even if you're a loner.

Congratulations, I hope the vaccine shows the same highly positive results in humans as it did in the other primates.

Jury is out until the overall health effect is shown to be positive

Hard "in-mice" vibes.

Duck yeah

OK this sounds fantastic, but is it going to be another case of an expert dropping in on this thread and going "Ah, 100s of these come out every month. It's promising but nowhere near human trials yet."

The timeline of HIV/AIDS discovery to treatment to "cure" is fascinating to me

I distinctly remember Reagan cabinet members openly joking about all the people dying from it in WhiteHouse press briefing (basically Trump before Trump prototypes)

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_HIV/AIDS

Now if they could just do this for me-cfs/long-covid and related auto-immune diseases (there are over eighty) without the 50 year timeline please

I wish people doesn't let their guard down because of this

This follows a widely renounced successful treatment drug too right?

The hype train is strong. In reality antibodies can do absolutely nothing against retroviruses integrating into the genome. What they basically do is keep a host of perpetually paying customers. That does not solve the underlying problem.

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There's non-vaccine treatments and holistic therapies that work great for HIV too. Though if you talk about this you get labeled woo or an enemy to science. If people could make more money off those alternatives though I think it would be more acceptable to discuss.

Been there more times than I can count

Wait, really? Gonna have to look into this