JOHNSON & JOHNSON HIV VACCINE TRIAL FAILS

An HIV vaccine candidate manufactured by Johnson & Johnson failed to provide sufficient protection against infection, the company announced Tuesday, the latest blow to the HIV vaccination effort.

It’s yet another example of just how lucky we are that a vaccine to successfully fight the novel coronavirus was manufactured so easily.

The company said its Imbokodo study posed no safety concerns, but will not continue. The study enrolled approximately 2,600 young women across five countries in sub-Saharan Africa, a region where women and girls accounted for 63 percent of all new HIV infections in 2020.

Participants were randomly selected to receive either the vaccine or a placebo, and researchers found the vaccine’s efficacy was only about 25 percent, which was not statistically significant.

The investigational HIV vaccine was manufactured using a strain of common-cold virus engineered to not cause illness, the same basic technology as Johnson & Johnson’s coronavirus vaccine. It was administered to participants through four vaccination visits over a year.

“While we are disappointed that the vaccine candidate did not provide a sufficient level of protection against HIV infection in the Imbokodo trial, the study will give us important scientific findings in the ongoing pursuit for a vaccine to prevent HIV,” Paul Stoffels, chief scientific officer at Johnson & Johnson, said in a statement.