TAG HIV Basic Science, Vaccines, and Cure Project Blog
By Richard Jefferys, Project Director at Treatment Action Group (TAG).
recent posts
- TAG’s HIV Cure-Related Clinical Research Listing: Background on the February 2026 Update
- TAG’s HIV Cure-Related Clinical Research Listing: Background on the December 2025 and January 2026 Updates
- TAG’s HIV Cure-Related Clinical Research Listing: Background on the November 2025 Update
- TAG’s HIV Cure-Related Clinical Research Listing: Background on the October 2025 Update
- TAG’s HIV Cure-Related Clinical Research Listing: Background on the September 2025 Update
Category: Adenovirus vectors
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For November 2024, there were 11 updates to TAG’s listing. We’ve also added the country locations for each of the current trials (previously, site locations were only included in the table in our annual Research Toward a Cure and Immune-Based Therapies Pipeline Report). New Additions Four new clinical trials were identified in registries: Researchers in…
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There were 14 updates to TAG’s listing for October 2024. New Additions Two new clinical trials were identified in registries, neither yet open for enrollment: Researchers in the UK are initiating a study of the anti-CMV drug letermovir primarily to assess effects on T cell activation in people with HIV on antiretroviral therapy (ART). Markers…
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There are 14 updates in the June 2024 revision to TAG’s listing. New Additions Three newly registered studies have been added: two interventional and one observational. The German company Hookipa Biotech is sponsoring a clinical trial assessing two therapeutic HIV vaccine candidates based on an arenavirus vector platform in people with HIV on antiretroviral…
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On Monday February 3rd it was announced that HVTN 702, a large-scale HIV vaccine efficacy trial taking place in South Africa, had found no evidence of protection against HIV acquisition. The information emerged from a pre-planned review of interim results conducted by the trial’s Data Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB), which revealed roughly equal numbers of…
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The pharmaceutical industry has made significant contributions to HIV vaccine research, but it has been rare for a major company to take the leading role in propelling a candidate toward efficacy testing. The only example to date occurred around the turn of the millennium with Merck’s adenovirus serotype 5 (Ad5) vector, which showed some evidence…
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The annual Conference on Retroviruses & Opportunistic Infections (CROI) took place in Seattle from February 13th-16th, offering a dizzying parade of new data. Webcasts of presentations and PDF files of posters were rapidly placed online and are accessible via the CROI website. A Fillip for Kick & Kill On the cure research front, the results…
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Since the earliest days of HIV research, the idea of trying to enhance immune responses to the virus using therapeutic vaccination has been extensively explored, but with little success. The ability of the virus to compromise CD4 T cells, which would normally coordinate antiviral immunity, may be one contributor to the generally disappointing results. Virus-induced…
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A paper published earlier this month in Science augurs a major new effort to advance a prime-boost HIV vaccine strategy into human efficacy trials. The vaccine components are manufactured by Crucell Holland B.V, which is now one of the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson, and—in a very welcome development for the HIV vaccine…
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Vaccine vectors based on adenoviruses—which are common in nature and cause severe colds—were once viewed as promising for HIV and other intractable diseases due to their ability to induce antigen-specific CD8 T cell responses in the majority of recipients. The subsequent Icarus-like trajectory of the approach in HIV has been covered in some detail on…
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In September 2007, the HIV vaccine field received an unexpected setback when it was announced that the phase IIb efficacy trial of a candidate developed by Merck was being stopped early due to lack of efficacy. The trial was conducted by the HIV Vaccine Trials Network (HVTN) and was referred to as the STEP study.…