Although huge strides have been made with antiretroviral therapy (ART) and prevention since HIV was first reported 42 years ago, there is still not an effective preventive vaccine or a scalable cure for those living with HIV. But broadly neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs) look to be a further step down the pathway to a cure, speakers said during the International AIDS Society meeting held July 23 to 26 in Brisbane, Australia.

In the larger picture, the fight against HIV has been a triumph of modern medicine. A patient diagnosed with HIV in the 1980s had a remaining life expectancy of 1 to 2 years. In 2023, they can expect to live another half century. But so far, an HIV vaccine has remained elusive. In the newest phase III failure, Janssen Pharmaceutical Cos. of Johnson & Johnson closed down its Mosaico trial more than a year ahead of schedule, following a data and safety monitoring board’s (DSMB) report saying the study was not expected to hit its primary endpoint.

The emergence of new variants of concern (VOCs) of SARS-CoV-2 may limit the efficacy of monoclonal antibodies and vaccines currently used in the clinic.

A diverse group of government and academic researchers, marking World AIDS Day 2022, have published details of an investigational vaccine they said safely induced broadly neutralizing antibody-precursors against HIV in nearly all participants in a small phase I trial.

Broadly neutralizing antibodies are one of the most powerful weapons against HIV. And like everything that is effective in the fight against HIV, they are hard to come by.

In 2020, the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) was the first medical conference to go virtual, with two days advance warning, when news of infections resulting from a Biogen Inc. conference with about 150 attendees made it abundantly clear that SARS-CoV-2 was circulating, well, probably everywhere.