Johnson & Johnson has ended a clinical test of a vaccine for HIV after the experimental treatment failed to provide the required amount of protection for young women in South Africa who are at high risk of acquiring the virus.
The would-be HIV vaccine employs the same technology used for COVID-19 and Ebola viruses, but this recent major setback is another example of a massive challenge of producing a vaccine against the dreaded disease.
Called Imbokodo, the clinical trial enrolled 2,600 women in sub-Sahran Africa. Johnson & Johnson, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) launched the study in 2017.
Johnson & Johnson and its partners said all trial participants had been administered with either a vaccine or a placebo in 2020.
The objective of the vaccine wasn't to completely stop infection, but to minimize the chance of infection by 50%. The vaccine did not trigger any harmful effects and was well tolerated, but only provided a 25% efficacy.
Based on the results, the Imbokodo Study will be suspended. Johnson & Johnson said it will continue its search for an HIV vaccine.
In a statement, Johnson & Johnson Chief Scientific Officer Dr. Paul Stoffels said HIV is a "unique and complex virus that has long posed unprecedented challenges for the development of vaccines because of its ability to attack and evade the human immune system," BioSpace reported.
Stofels said that while they are dismayed the experimental vaccine did not provide a sufficient level of protection against the virus, the research will give them important scientific knowledge in the pursuit for a vaccine to prevent HIV.
Prominent scientists and health experts, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, have been searching for an effective vaccine against HIV since the disease was first detected in the 1980s.
If left untreated, HIV can lead to AIDS, or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome.
Today, almost 39 million people have HIV across the globe. Although effective treatments can now help people with the virus live long and healthy lives, no vaccine has yet bee produce to prevent infection.
Meanwhile, another final-phase test called Mosaico, which employs a slightly different vaccine strategy and is being tested among men who engage in sexual intercourse with men in North America and Europe, will continue.
