Every Dec. 1, the world commemorates those who have died from an AIDS-related illness. Known as World AIDS Day, it serves as a reminder that there has been an ongoing pandemic for the past 40 years, pre-dating Covid.<\/p>\n
The Covid vaccines were sequenced, developed and approved in the U.S. in record time, but that would not have been possible without decades of work by HIV researchers.<\/p>\n
"Almost everybody working on Covid vaccines comes from the HIV world," said Mitchell Warren, executive director of AVAC, a global advocacy group for HIV prevention. "Moderna had been working on mRNA-based HIV vaccine before SARS-CoV-2 was even known to exist."<\/p>\n
An HIV vaccine has eluded scientists for decades. The traditional thinking around vaccines is to mimic the body's natural immune response to a virus. The problem with HIV is the body's natural immune response isn't strong enough to fight the virus. This means a vaccine has to come at the problem in a different way. Scientists are hopeful that mRNA technology \u2014 the same technology used in the Covid vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech \u2014 could be a turning point.<\/p>\n
Government funding is a crucial component of all vaccine research and development.\u00a0Within a few months, Operation Warp Speed allocated $10 billion to Covid vaccine research and development. By contrast, between 2000 and 2020, the U.S. government contributed $12 billion toward HIV vaccine research and development. This funding frequently goes to private companies.<\/p>\n
"Just about every vaccine that we get today was developed by some private company, even though the actual research and development may have been a shared enterprise," said Dr. Jeffrey Harris, co-founder of the HIV Vaccine Trials Network.<\/p>\n
Public-private partnerships can have serious implications for who turns a profit and who ultimately gets access to the vaccine. Moderna and the National Institutes of Health are currently locked in a legal battle over a key patent for the Moderna Covid vaccine.<\/p>\n