TAG HIV Basic Science, Vaccines, and Cure Project Blog
By Richard Jefferys, Project Director at Treatment Action Group (TAG).
recent posts
- HIV Cure Research at AIDS 2026
- In The News: CAR-T Cells for HIV
- TAG’s HIV Cure-Related Clinical Research Listing: Background on the March 2026 Update
- 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
Category: Vaccines
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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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There are twelve updates to the listing this month: four new interventional trials and one observational study have been added (all yet to start recruiting), a planned observational study was withdrawn, a trial of immunomodulators has begun recruiting in China, one trial has shifted to the completed studies table, and links to presentations/publications describing results…
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Disappointing news was announced today about the HIV vaccine efficacy trial, Mosaico (also codenamed HVTN 706/HPX3002). A scheduled interim analysis of the results by the Data Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB) found that the vaccines were safe but there was no prospect of demonstrating protective efficacy against acquisition of HIV infection in the study population, prompting…
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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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Back in 2012, a paper describing a study of a novel vaccine approach in the SIV/macaque model was published to little fanfare in the open access journal Cell Reports. The brainchild of researcher Jean-Marie Andrieu, the idea behind the vaccine was to turn the traditional approach to immunization on its head: the aim was to suppress…
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In 2009, a slight but statistically significant level of protective efficacy was reported from a large HIV vaccine trial conducted in Thailand. The trial, named RV144, involved a combination of an ALVAC canarypox vector encoding HIV antigens and a gp120 protein boost (AIDSVAX). Receipt of the vaccines was associated with a 31.2% reduction in the…
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Last week saw a slew of news emerge from the IAS 2015 conference and related satellite meetings in Vancouver. Below are links to some presentations of possible interest and information on how to find materials online. 2015 Towards an HIV Cure Symposium On July 18 & 19, immediately preceding the main conference, the fifth IAS Towards…
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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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The past decade has seen a boom in the identification of antibodies capable of potently neutralizing a broad array of different HIV isolates (broadly neutralizing antibodies or bNAbs). New technologies that allow antibodies to be fished from huge numbers of individual B cells and tested for activity have spurred this rapid acceleration of discovery. There…