Passed into the background for a year because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the fight against HIV once again captures all the light, Friday March 26, on the occasion of Sidaction.
While the virus that causes AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) has caused the death of more than 32 million people around the world since the 1980s, scientists are continuing their research and increasing initiatives to develop a vaccine to overcome this scourge.
This research has been slowed down by the health crisis linked to the coronavirus, even if several trials have recently been relaunched, explains Serawit Bruck-Landais, director of the health research and quality center of Sidaction, contacted by France 24.
[Press release] đź“ś
The # Sidaction2021 is launched!
It takes place on March 26, 27 and 28.
Three days of collection, but also of mobilization and information on the fight against AIDS.
https://t.co/hLVLJLGDzV pic.twitter.com/er75pXczSh
- Sidaction (@Sidaction) March 25, 2021
Several tests and "a rather innovative strategy"
The question of a vaccine strategy has mobilized research since the start of the HIV epidemic, recalls Serawit Bruck-Landais, citing "many failures, and vaccine projects or vaccination strategies which have since evolved thanks to our finer knowledge on the virus and the immune system ".
These developments now make it possible to test complete strategies capable of circumventing the problems of an unstable virus, which mutates and from which many subtypes arise.
So where are we today?
"There is a very advanced phase 3 trial for which results are expected in 2022", replies the director of the Sidaction research center.
The trial in question tests a "mosaic" strategy, allowing the use of different pieces of the virus, corresponding to different subtypes, with the aim of being able to prevent most viruses circulating in the world.
Other trials are currently located further upstream, in phase 1. This is the case of the trial for a preventive vaccine, launched in France by the Vaccine Research Institute (VRI), a laboratory created by the Agency. French national research institute on AIDS and viral hepatitis (ANRS) and the University of Paris-Est Créteil.
This trial "tests a rather innovative strategy for optimizing dendritic cells: central immune cells which orchestrate our immune response", explains Serawit Bruck-Landais.
The idea, she continues, is to "target these cells so that they can recognize HIV viruses, then present them with antigens to stimulate the production of antibodies."
A call for volunteers was launched on February 25 by the French laboratory which has planned three stages of recruitment.
Currently in phase 1, the trial aims to "test the harmlessness of the vaccine", continues the director of scientific programs at Sidaction.
The interest at this stage is therefore to know whether the vaccine induces an immune response and whether the planned doses induce side effects.
The first volunteers will receive their injection in mid-April.
Figures from the HIV epidemic.
© FMM Graphic Studio
Collaboration between HIV researchers and Sars-CoV2 researchers
If research continues and is equipped with encouraging innovative means, it has had to face certain difficulties linked to the health crisis.
"The tests were interrupted or slowed down", explains Serawit Bruck-Landais, in particular because it was no longer possible to follow their thousands of participants because of "travel problems and barrier gestures".
The expected results have therefore been delayed.
However, it notes a positive counterpart to the health crisis: it has encouraged researchers on HIV and others on Covid-19 to collaborate.
This collaboration has notably made it possible to open up avenues of study on messenger RNA technology.
Used for two vaccines against Covid-19 (Pfizer and Moderna), "it has never been tested for HIV yet, but researchers have been looking at it for several months to apply it to HIV ", explains Serawit Bruck-Landais.
The two viruses are nevertheless very different, she recalls, thus justifying that the strategies tested for HIV have not yet succeeded, while several vaccines against Covid-19 have been found in record time.
"One is the coronavirus - Sars-CoV-2 - the other is a retrovirus - HIV," she explains.
“HIV mutates enormously. With each viral cycle, each time it multiplies, it generates at least twenty mutations, and on top of that, there are at least four subtypes circulating in the world and are different from each other ".
Logically, continues the director of the Sidaction research center, "the vaccine strategy is less complicated when it comes to having a single virus recognized by the immune system, than thousands of variants and at least four subtypes" .
In the meantime, she adds, the state of HIV research has benefited that of Sars-CoV-2.
"Vaccine strategies that have been tested for HIV and have not worked are being used for the Covid-19 vaccine, including the adenovirus vaccine [used by AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson, Editor's note]."
Quoting these strategies first developed within the framework of research on HIV, Serawit Bruck-Landais, affirms it: "There are interactions and lessons to be learned from one side as from the other".
In France, 173,000 people are living with HIV, a virus that affects the immune system and prevents the body from defending itself against disease.
It is also estimated that 24,000 people carry the virus without knowing it.
The drop in screening observed during the Covid-19 pandemic (around 650,000 tests not carried out in 2020, according to Public Health France estimates), raises fears of an epidemic rebound by 2022.
The summary of the week
France 24 invites you to come back to the news that marked the week
I subscribe
Take international news everywhere with you!
Download the France 24 application
google-play-badge_FR