The expected Johnson & Johnson HIV vaccine did not demonstrate adequate protection in a clinical trial in which young women participated in sub-Saharan Africa, as reported on Tuesday the company and the health authorities of the United States.
Although it was determined that the vaccine had no serious side effects, its effectiveness to prevent HIV infection was just over 25%.
As a result, the assay called Imbokodo, which began in 2017 and included some 2,600 women between 18 and 35 years, will be arrested and the participants of Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe were reported if they received the vaccine or placebo.
Women and girls represented 63% of new HIV infections in 2020 in this region.
Paul Stoffels, scientific director of J & J, thanked the women who participated in the essay and the laboratory partners in a statement.
“Despite our disappointment that the candidate vaccine would not provide a sufficient level of protection against HIV infection in the IMBOKODODO trial, the study will provide important scientific findings in the continuous search for a vaccine to prevent HIV,” he said.
“We must apply knowledge learned in the IMBOKODODO essay and continue our efforts to find a vaccine that protects against HIV,” said Anthony Fauki, director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases of the United States, which co-finances the study.
However, the laboratory will continue with a parallel trial in men who have sex with transgender men and individuals carried out in the Americas and Europe, where the composition of the vaccine differs as the prevalent strains of HIV do.
It is expected that this test will conclude in March 2024.
The results of the intermediate stage study are the last setback in the efforts to develop a vaccine to prevent HIV infection, which affected more than 37 million people around the world up to 2020.
In the four decades, since the first cases were documented as AIDS, scientists achieved great progress in HIV treatment, transforming what was once a death sentence in a treatable disease.
