Janssen to Launch Phase III Clinical Trial of Mosaic-Based HIV Vaccine Across Multiple Countries

On July 12, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson in the United States, announced plans to conduct Phase III clinical trials of an experimental HIV vaccine in multiple countries across Europe and the Americas later this year. This preventive vaccine is designed to serve as a universal HIV vaccine capable of protecting against multiple strains of the human immunodeficiency virus.

Corina Ramos-Verhoeven, a spokesperson for Janssen, told Xinhua News Agency on the 12th that clinical trials for this vaccine will be conducted in the United States, Mexico, Peru, Argentina, Italy, Poland, and Spain, with applications currently being submitted to local health regulatory authorities.

Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told U.S. media that the institute plans to recruit approximately 3,800 high-risk men to receive the vaccine. The institute will collaborate with Janssen Pharmaceuticals.

According to a previously released press statement by Janssen, this vaccine is a “mosaic vaccine” that splices together genes from different HIV strains to elicit immune responses against a broader range of HIV variants. The vaccine demonstrated favorable protective efficacy in animal studies and has confirmed its safety in conducted human clinical trials.

Bruce Walker, director of the Ragon Institute in the United States, stated that this vaccine has outperformed other candidate vaccines in animal studies, but the real questions are whether it is effective in humans, what proportion of people it protects, and how long its efficacy lasts.

A Janssen spokesperson also introduced that the company is conducting Phase II clinical trials of another HIV "mosaic vaccine" in five Southern African countries and has recently completed the recruitment of volunteers for the clinical trials.

Since the emergence of AIDS more than 30 years ago, the development of an effective HIV vaccine has been one of the relentless pursuits of the scientific community, but progress has remained relatively slow.