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Promising Vaccine Candidate Could Lead To a Definitive Cure For HIV
Zothecula writes "A very promising vaccine candidate for HIV/AIDS has shown the ability to completely clear the simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), a very aggressive form of HIV that leads to AIDS in monkeys. Developed at the Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute at the Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU), the vaccine proved successful in about fifty percent of the subjects tested and could lead to a human vaccine preventing the onset of HIV/AIDS and even cure patients currently on anti-retroviral drugs."
Hell yeah!
Most of these potential vaccines turn out to be unworkable - but try long enough and hard enough, eventually scientists will hit upon a really good one.
Which is why they spent over $500 million in 2011 just on HIV vaccine clinical trials? Sorry, your argument doesn't really hold water, and anyway the company that *does* come up with the vaccine will make a killing.
Help I am stuck in a signature factory!
Not just make a killing, but will put all the other companies out of business as their treatments become worthless.
Which is why they spent over $500 million in 2011 just on HIV vaccine clinical trials? Sorry, your argument doesn't really hold water, and anyway the company that *does* come up with the vaccine will make a killing.
I agree, but you are arguing against a conspiracy theory, never works.
I hear about these HIV/AIDS cures every year but they always disappear.
Why is figure 12 in the supplements, it seems to be the most important part (it compares cd4+ T-cell levels)? It is not even mentioned in the main text. Isn't reduction in the actual pathology the most important goal of a treatment?
This sounds really interesting...
It sounds like, instead of infecting the patient with a blunted virus that would eventually die away, they are permanently infecting the patient with a persistent virus that looks and acts like their target but causes no harm to keep up the immune response over the long haul. Sounds to me like a really interesting approach.
Maybe someone could enlighten me to the history of this approach in the treatment of other diseases, or is it novel?
Hmm, the humour and sarcasm seem to have been be lost on you.
Vets all over the world rejoice! Your monkeys will be free of HIV anytime now!
Nice tinfoil hat. When can I buy one?
Besides any vaccination campaign would take some years to ramp up and anti-retrovirals become less effective and ultimately go out of patent over time any way. So it's not like their business is going to go bust over night or wouldn't have drawn to a natural end anyway.
I can't tell you how long I've wanted to have unprotected sex with monkeys. It doesn't feel the same when using a rubber.
You don't buy tinfoil hats. The ones you buy are all compromised. Learn how to build a tinfoil hat yourself.
Only if they price it so that everyone who needs it can afford it. Obviously that won't happen, they will want to maximize profit in rich countries instead of practically giving it away in Africa, so all those poor people will still need the other cheaper treatments.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You don't! You have to make it yourself, otherwise it could be made to allow the establishment to read your thoughts just when you thought you were safe!
There are provisions in international law that state that poor countries can ignore patents on life-saving drugs if the patent-holder prices them prohibitively expensively. In practice, this means that drug companies price the products by region, trying to replicate the US model of "rich people can afford it, poor people can go and die in a corner."
the company that *does* come up with the vaccine will make a killing.
Wouldn't that mean the vaccine doesn't work?
Pharma companies make boatloads of money selling lifelong drugs to HIV sufferers. The last thing they want is a cure that'd kill the cash cow.
OTOH, have you any idea what would happen to the share price of the first company to produce a cure for AIDS? Any individuals in a position to suppress it would also likely stand to profit from a bonanza share options windfall. And suppressing it without shareholder approval would be potentially criminal, and definitely actionable in the civil courts.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
The world is full of stupid and reckless people. We can't fix this, but at least a vaccine can contain the damage.
I always liked this line of tinfoil hat craziness. It reminds me of the people who say "there will never be a cure for cancer" except when you point out that there are indeed various clinical trials up now, and in some case experimental deployment of various cancer drugs now. My grandmother who has stage 4 lung cancer received a non-radiation treatment as part of her treatment plan, it reduced the size of the tumors by 50%. Sadly it didn't reduce it enough that they could successfully operate and remove said cancer, or even remove the lung itself.
Or people who complain that there won't be a cure for diabetes, except where you can point out things like...islet implants(aka a artificial pancreas). Where the failure rate over time is in the 20-30% range after 15 years. My sister got that, as part of the clinical trials here in Canada. Sadly she was in the very small subset(~10%) where it fails within 3 years.
Om, nomnomnom...
It boils down to "Dead people don't make you money."
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Several companies are starting their phase 3 trials about now. I've invested in one of them. If they are successfull I'll retire, but I mostly invested just to make sure someone is working on it.
It takes time to move from "killing viruses in a jar" to actually making something that removes the viruses from people without killing them at the same time.
Given that HIV/AIDS has made the population growth rates in certain places explode, and that these places have very young populations, would a definitive cure for HIV/AIDS set off a massive population timebomb? Has any thought been given to the consequences of very suddenly removing a big source of mortality?
Usually they practice price discrimination, which any Econ 101 student can demonstrate as a way to price that maximizes your profits. A single, fixed price only benefits the wealthy.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Yeah, like that's gonna work. Patents you have to keep secret are worthless, because as soon as someone else develops it (and your patent could strike), you'd have to go public with it anyway.
Tech burying only works exactly if you can go public with it but can claim that not releasing it is in some way good for the consumers.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Nice try, shill. That's the new tactic, trying to sound like you're helping while undermining the system and paving the way for THEM. We all know already that you made sure that all the tinfoil we could buy on the open market has been tampered with to make it useless for building hats.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Actually, a number of big pharma companies do give away (or sell at cost) to poor regions like sub-Saharan Africa the same medications they charge an arm and a leg for in the richer parts of the world. Where the process breaks down is when a disease disproportionally affects a poor region (like malaria) such that there is not a fiscally sound business model for pursuing the high risk/benefit research involved with drug development.
As an aside, I think that one of the most commendable fields of the Gates Foundation is their promotion of research for malaria (see the TED talk where Gates releases a jar of mosquitoes into the audience).
As someone who actually worked on (albeit briefly) an HIV vaccine candidate, I'd like to comment that there have been a number of successful anti-SIV vaccines already, each of which have gone on to miserable -- and expensive -- failures when the underlying technology was applied to an HIV vaccine. And for those candidates that actually made it to human trials before failure, each attempt had a human cost as well (conspiracy theorists, go fuck yourselves).
That being said, the approach used is rather clever, if someone risky. The technique used is what is known as a "Heterologous Antigen" delivery, but in this case it has been combined with a persistent agent that establishes a life-long infection. The vector used was Rhesus Cytomegalovirus, which has a analogous human virus known as Human Cytomegalovirus, aka Herpesvirus-5.
CMV is a very common infection (in some countries 90+%, although somewhat lower in the United States). It's generally considered harmless to healthy individuals, and most pick it up during childhood, where it is commonly passed around in daycare centers and such. Initial symptoms are usually mild and non-specific (although in some individuals it can produce Mono-like symptoms), and typically afterwards the viral infection is well-controlled with no further signs of infection. Unlike some more famous members of the Herpesvirus family, it does not produce any sores or vesicles or such.
However, on occasion it can be dangerous, as one of the infectious agents that can sometimes result in TORCH syndrome effects (like the infamous "Blueberry Muffin Baby") when primary infections (first encounter with the infectious agent for an individual) occurs in a pregnant women. It can also be dangerous in immunosuppressed individuals, such as organ transplant recipients and advanced AIDS patients.
$500m of whom's money? I know there are lots of grants out there. I remember my ISP saying similar things. "We spent over $1bil upgrading our state-of-the-art fiber network in your state." But they don't tell you about most of the money coming from the Government.
They can vaccinate you with some poorly tested crap as well, then cash-in on the medication needed to cure the "side effects". Alzheimer's, cancers ... and restless leg syndrome.
It is a win-win situation for the pharma-industrial-complex. Also even if you don't FSCK around like rabbits, you will be either required or scared into thinking that you need the vaccination. Maybe some "accidental" blood contaminations breaking news will do that for you...
There are also blood bank contaminations, health workers get it from blood, and there are the unlucky who are born with it.
Also rubbers break and if you are really unlucky thee are other ways to get it... blood contacting your wound, eyes.. etc.. While not common, it can happen...
True, but there are multiple companies working on these things. If one doesn't have a drug on the market then they're not benefitting from the other companies making money and it WOULD work better for them to develop a cure.
Also, take note that this isn't a straight-up cure - its a vaccination. Think about that for a second - its expanding the market. If you're marketting a cure, or even just treatments, then you're only selling your drug to people that actually have the disease. A vaccination gets taken even by people who DON'T. Why sell your AIDS treatment to the tiny bit of the population that actually has AIDS you you can sell your vaccination to the entire population instead?
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Unless you're an undertaker.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Nice tinfoil hat. When can I buy one?
The NSA has already read your post and will be mailing you one later today.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
Nah, then they will just pay someone to write a paper stating that HIV vaccine causes autism.
What cash cow? There is a lot of competition from India and elsewhere and in fact the profit from HIV drugs has become very low now. It used to cost $1000 a day to treat HIV .. now it's about $10 and there are many different companies making the drugs. How did the cost drop? Why didn't they keep the cost at $1000 a day so they can make more money?
If it's such a profitable business to make HIV drugs why don't you make them? You can make them in India or South Africa where patents on medicines are not recognized. Also you can slightly modify the drug's molecular structure (without affecting its effectiveness much) and not have to worry about the patent.
Yes, those children who catch it from their mothers really ought to know better.
http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/risk/gender/pregnantwomen/index.html
So are you saying you don't understand that drugs cost huge amounts of money to research, develop, test, and approve? Or is it that you don't understand that no business concern can operate at a loss indefinitely?
It may SUCK that we have to make these decisions, but unless you have a way of funding drug research that doesn't involve the companies doing the research losing money year after year, then this is the reality we live in.
Education would make those poor people's lives better. Better food. Better medicine. Better housing. Better water treatment. Is it "sickening" that I didn't buy a house for a poor family in Africa, yet bought a house for myself and my family? Is the contractor who built my house morally reprehensible for working for me, instead of losing his life's savings building houses that people can't afford in Africa?
Please learn to divorce the touchy-feely "every human is special and deserves to live like Warren Buffett" from the practical reality that there's no such thing as a free lunch.
Even if that were true, if a competitor could kill that business and make only a few million in the process, that's still profit for them instead of the competitor.
An increase in supply now only decreases the pool for later profits. You want them to live long enough to:
A) Have children
B) Bug their children to give them grandchildren.
Why it works in 50% might have something to do with how the CMV vaccines already in trials (not for HIV) only have a 50% efficacy rate in humans. This is according to a 2009 study I found via Wikipedia...
Patents you have to keep secret are worthless
Yeah, things that don't exist often are.
Ezekiel 23:20
Wrong - you're just so wrong. Look at the top causes of death worldwide - HIV/AIDS is SIXTH, more people die of diarrhea than of HIV, and diarrhea is very preventable. More than FOUR times the number die of heart disease, which is also largely preventable.
And that's just worldwide. As an exercise to improve your awareness of the facts, go look up the causes of death in the U.S. and report back to us. Don't forget to mention motor vehicle accidents (4 times the deaths caused by HIV), and FREAKING DIABETES (8 times the deaths caused by HIV).
People needlessly die from HIV/AIDS, but it's not even close to the "biggest Darwin award disease ever". Maybe you have some personal bias that makes you think that.
That's not the fallacy. The fallacy would be "We've already spent 500 million on research and development for this drug, but shit, only the incredibly impoverished really need it so we must charge them an arm and a leg, even if that means no one can buy it". It is not "There is no viable market for this drug, therefore we should not spend any money on R&D for it, because it could bankrupt us". That's just a rational economic decision.
You think all Bayer makes is HIV treatments? Losing one product doesn't make a company go bankrupt.
True, when Bayer's heroin sales became unpopular, and then it lost it's Zyklon-B product line, they still had aspirin to fall back on.
Sorry. I was being facetious. One of the arguments anti-vaxxers put up is that the dramatic decline of polio, measles, etc. infections had nothing to do with the vaccines we began administering en mass, but rather because we all started washing our hands. Which is, of course, absolute hogwash.
And the rape victims. Especially the 9-year-old girls who are raped because it's believed sex with a virgin will cure you of the disease. Yeah, everyone with HIV totally deserves it.
Additionally, there is more profit with older deaths due to add on services. Old and violent deaths in open casket funerals lets you make awesome additional charges on making the body presentable.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
The day they come out with a guaranteed one-shot cure for AIDS, there will be f***ing in the streets.
"IT'S OVEEEEERRRRR!"
"WHOOOOOHOOOO!"
"Who are you? C'mere!"
"No, it's over! YEAH!"
And if you can't get laid that day, just cut it off!
The way to make money is to offer:
1. A vaccine.
2. A cure.
3. Long-term treatment.
parent up please
I have patents on that business model, asshole.
You will be hearing from my attorney!
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
That's ridiculous. I realize that it's cool to hate on big pharma, but let's keep it within the realm of reality.
HIV related medications aren't something that the industry would like to be involved in. The medications don't last very long before the virus mutates it in a way that renders it ineffective. During that time they have to charge huge amounts of money to hopefully break even before they need a new medication. Same goes for antibiotics, the more you sell, the less effective it becomes. And a lot of the folks with HIV have it because they didn't know how to protect themselves or engage in other risky behaviors.
The medications that they like selling are things like diabetes or asthma medications that are needed for decades and don't need to be updated regularly.
Or in other words, big pharma would be more than happy to cure HIV because it's just not that profitable compared with other chronic diseases and there's little predictability about how much they could make in the future.
Just as there's mass hysteria and a lot of unfounded accusations around the rubella and other vaccinations, there will be with the HIV vaccine as well. Ignorant parents will insist it made their kid autistic or ADHD or a gangbanger or whatever.
You should go to the Wiki and look up "Why the fuck would they bother investing money in all that to begin with if they plan to exsanguinate themselves by operating at a loss from the start". The sunk cost fallacy means "Don't throw good money after bad", not "Throw your money in the garbage plan because you'll never make anything out of it anyway".
So you're not a dentist, a physician, surgeon, EMT, tattoist, piercer, virus technician, phlebotomist, LNA, RN, LPN, or a compassionate person with first aid skills so you would never, ever come into contact with anyone else's blood, and you're fortunate enough to never, ever need a transfusion, require dental work, or any surgery or injections? There are people who live straight-edge lives who have contracted HIV, you know - and that doesn't take into account rape victims, children of AIDS patients, and so on.
Also, HIV is prevalently a heterosexual disease now. It hasn't been a predominantly gay disease since the 1980s. FYI condoms are only 90% effective at best, so I hope your whores aren't infected.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Somewhat misleading - I listened to this topic on NPR for the past week (first heard about it Monday - yay /.!). 50% of test cases were successful, so while the vaccine is a good thing to continue to investigate, "very promising" is a bit off as it needs more work. Although, it should also be noted that SIV is a much much more deadly disease than HIV/AIDS.
Also, the one in something like 30-billion chance that you contract it through a handshake? It hasn't ever been confirmed to happen but is theoretically possible. Also, I hope you don't use public toilets, because some HIV strains have been evolved which can survive for long periods in the open air on hard surfaces. Don't use public restrooms, don't touch handrails, etc.
Not everyone with HIV is gay (most aren't!), has "unsafe" sex, or does IV drugs.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Re: Gates Foundation and malaria.
Also worthy of note is the GO Fight Against Malaria Project at World Community Grid and the research done at Scripps in La Jolla. From the Wikipedia article,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Community_Grid#GO_Fight_Against_Malaria_Project
a relevant portion
"In the latest status report, published on November 2012 and available here, the scientists reported that several compounds had been found to inhibit the virus activity. 20 compounds were ordered, 19 actually arrived, of which 3 were not soluble. From the remaining 16, 7 inhibited Mtb InhA(Mycobacterium tuberculosis). The best hit displayed an IC50 value of approximately 40 micro-Molar. The discovery of this compound is important because of the drug resistant superbugs of Mycobacterium tuberculosis."
The "here" link is
http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/forums/wcg/viewthread_thread,34265_offset,0#401213
and current status as of 10 July 2013 at
http://gofightagainstmalaria.scripps.edu/index.php/how-we-will-discover-potential-malaria-drugs
Their data is open and available.
They can vaccinate you with some poorly tested crap as well, then cash-in on the medication needed to cure the "side effects". Alzheimer's, cancers ... and restless leg syndrome.
I'm sorry, I must be behind on the medical literature. What vaccines have been proven to cause Alzheimer's or cancer?
Or in other words, big pharma would be more than happy to cure HIV because it's just not that profitable compared with other chronic diseases and there's little predictability about how much they could make in the future.
Not only that, it's fantastic PR. The company that produces a vaccine that ends the HIV pandemic will be bragging about it for the next several decades, and rightly so. (Same goes for cancer, the common cold, etc.) They will be guaranteed profits, because foundations like Gates, NGOs like the WHO and UN, and some governments will hand them buckets of cash to inoculate their populations. Of course it will also take many years to truly eradicate a disease which already infects huge numbers of adults, guaranteeing a long-term revenue stream. It's just such a no-brainer that any pharma CEO who suppresses a cure to keep selling medications which will be off-patent in a few years anyway should be locked up for defrauding shareholders.
You should do your own homework too. That is nothing like the fallacy of sunken costs. The fallacy refers to when somebody invests in a course of action, and sticks to it when it is clear that the investment won't pay off. Citation: http://www.skepdic.com/sunkcost.html
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
Nah, those kinds of folks are still stuck on the whole "HIV doesn't cause AIDS" bs. :P
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
GP was wrong, but the game theory concept still holds. Sure, it is financially beneficial for the supplier to develop long term treatments, but the consequences of a competitor sweeping the market out from underneath them with a cure (or something close to it) is very great. And vice verse, if they are the ones to develop it.
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
There is only enough blood supply to work one head at a time.
Also:
A hard cock has no conscience.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
To help the uninitiated I posted this in a thread devoted to dealing with the dangers of HAARP. I repost in the fervent hope it may be of use to enhancing the safety and sagacity of those who might otherwise be afflicted.
"There is a bit more to it. First, about the "tin-foil" - it's obvious to most, of course, that we're really speaking of aluminium foil (how that got originally termed 'tin-foil' is curious). Standard weight is OK for most.
"Here's the trick. It really requires a sandwich or layered approach. Wear any kind of soft cloth head cover - handkerchief, skullcap, welder's cap. The hat itself starts with the foil. Then a layer of waxed paper. Then, and this is very important, a layer of Mylar (or other brand of aluminized plastic film). Over that, as the top and final layer, newsprint. The colored comics section is alright, but avoid the glossy photographs from the magazine section.
"One last thing. If you live very near a principal Ley line, you are advised to add an additional layer each of waxed-paper and Mylar."
Actually all 3 have various benefits:
Vaccine: It's great! You get to sell it to people who aren't even sick yet!
Cure: You beat everybody else who only have treatments for selling it. Gotta love competitive advantage. Generally speaking the person will survive longer and buy other stuff in your line of products.
Long-term treatment: They keep coming back, yes, but you can have problems keeping it affordable.
I don't read AC A human right
My child is deathly ill. If, however, you give me all your savings, his life can be saved.
Would you?
Pretty much. I'm not the biggest fan of big pharma, but some of the conspiracy theories are just ridiculous. Yes, they do tend to overcharge and use government subsidies to help their profits, but there's more than enough incurable diseases out there to provide treatments for to make it not worthwhile to hold back on cures for things that can be cured.
Preventative medicine isn't really their domain anyways.
Sadly, it's a real thing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV/AIDS_denialism
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
HIV is a prevalently heterosexual disease in _Africa_. They have some weird sexual practices there that makes it transmit much better. African standard for 'perfect pussy' is bone dry and very tight.
The straight AIDS epidemic has still not arrived in the first world. It remains largely a gay and IV drug users disease. Women that fuck gay men and drug abusers are catching it, but mostly that's as far as it goes.
Put bluntly, to catch AIDS through sex you have to be 'a catcher'.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Ok, that was very badly worded, of course "secret patents" are an oxymoron. What I meant is that it's possible to abuse the patent system in such a way that you don't disclose the critical parts of your invention. You simply do not patent them, knowing that your product is guarded by patents on one side and by trade secrets on the other side, ensuring that you neither have to produce it yourself if you don't want to, not allowing anyone else to do so.
There is actually even the tactic that you avoid patenting something that would be identified easily as something everyone wants (and you do NOT want to make because it would kill your market for something else), but instead patent a step in its production that cannot be sidestepped or replaced. This is actually pretty common with pharma corporations where, for very obvious reasons, people would go crazy if they learned that you have the cure for X and don't want to produce it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If you can posit a mechanism where a vaccine against a virus might restore your tcell count but leave the virus untouched, you might have a point, but there is no such mechanism.
Vaccine, no. But some other techniques might result in such a situation; gene-therapy to produce a functional CCR5-delta32-like state of resistance might do it, if the result was a mixed population of both altered and unaltered T-cells.
While no succesful implementation of a therapy currently exists, the strategy is thought to be sound, given the success of the Berlin Patient example, which used a transplant of naturally occurring CCR5-delta32 bone-marrow. Unlike the Berlin Patient however (who was a leukemia patient to begin with), complete eradication of original host immune system before therapy is likely too risky for general use, which is why I think a mixed susceptible/resistant system afterwards is a more likely outcome.
Of course, this assumes that having a population of some (instead of all) HIV-resistant T-cells is sufficient to protect against the more serious consequences of AIDS. It may not be a true assumption, given that we now know HIV has cytopathological effects beyond that of killing CD4 cells.
close to the metal as possible
It matters which metal though. In this inflationary post-1933 hellscape that we all live in you really can't trust the traditional coinage metals. This is why all my hats are lined with rhodium foil.
You can't spell "oneiromancy" without "roman".
Yeah, you're right; I was saving that for the kits I was gonna sell.
Flu, MRM, probably others too. Mercury and typhoid monkey kidneys they use for the cultures are a bit of a turn-off. The lack of testing is an added plus. While MRM vaccines were tested separately, there was never a clinical trial of the mixture. And they give that to 3 year old kids in most everywhere. Some of these kids suffer serious damage to their digestive tract. Not proven but suggested by many, that this damage can be linked to the sudden onset of autism. One that in many cases can be fully or partially cured by a special diet (mostly plant based, free of chemicals).
If it is not too "tin-foil-hat" an interesting watch on the subject is "Are Vaccines safe"..
That's why I said to offer them.
No, just no. There is no evidence for vaccines causing autism and there never was. http://news.nationalgeographic.com.au/news/2013/07/130716-autism-vaccines-mccarthy-view-medicine-science/ The new McCarthyism is as bad as the old.
Not comfortable. Can Gates just go back to fricasseeing baby penguins, so we can get on with a thorough-going hate-night?
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"