“We have never been so close to enjoying a future without AIDS” : this is the slogan of the
Sidaction 2023 which started Thursday and continues until Sunday evening. Three days of mobilization, information, awareness and collection from the general public to fight against HIV. In France, 5,000 people discover their HIV status each year.
And yet, forty years after the discovery of the AIDS virus, the hope of seeing the virus disappear is growing day by day. The improvement of daily treatments and, more recently, therapeutic reductions have given great hope to people living with HIV, to researchers and to medical personnel. On the research side, a French vaccine has just shown very encouraging results.
A new technology to “educate” the immune system
This vaccine uses innovative technology. For the first time, French researchers from
the National Agency for Research on Infectious Diseases chose to inject HIV proteins bound to monoclonal antibodies. Injections made to alert and stimulate the immune system, as explained by Jennifer Pasquier, scientific director of Sidaction. “It’s a vaccine candidate that targets key cells of the immune system. These are dendritic cells, which really play an important role in activating the immune response against infections. It’s a new strategy and we need to so wait to see what it will give, but it would be great! It would capitalize on the natural role of these cells, the dendritic cells, to educate and prepare the immune system before an infection “she explains.
“Every step that has passed for these vaccine trials is a small victory”
The results of the first phase are very encouraging. “These first phase 1 results are promising: the CD40.HIVRI.Env vaccine has demonstrated both its safety and its ability to induce early, potent and long-lasting responses”reports Professor Yves Lévy, director of the
Vaccine Research Institute (VRI). The vaccine is safe, no adverse effects detected and above all, it induces an early, significant and lasting immune response.
But this is only phase 1 of this clinical trial, as Florence Thune, general manager of Sidaction, reminds us. “It is still indeed an important first phase since it makes it possible to test the good acceptability of the vaccine, the fact that there is an immune response and therefore we are effectively moving on to a next phase which makes it possible to extend the vaccine and the population concerned. So each step that is passed for these vaccine trials is a small victory”according to her.
Very encouraging results. The team continues to monitor the 72 volunteers for 12 months. The 2nd stage of the trial is continuing with additional groups of volunteers having received the vaccine candidate combined with another vaccine currently in development in phase II/III. But Sidaction officials insist on the need to make donations to continue funding research.