Running a little late this morning but I do have some public health news to share that is potentially amazing.

The fight against the global pandemic of COVID-19 sped the development, testing, and eventual approval of a new approach to vaccines, using messenger RNA to have the body produces elements of the target virus to train the immune system for when an actual infection arrives. This is the basis for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines which are proving to be so gloriously effective. The basic science and technique of using mRNA for a vaccine approach has been in

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the works for many years, basic science funded by government grants with an eye to many deadly viruses that we haven’t yet produced a vaccine for.

In a press release yesterday Moderna announced that it has two mRNA candidates, mRNA-1644 and mRNA-1574 that is plans to advance for phase 1 trails this year as potential vaccines for HIV.

Now there is a lot that can go wrong between here and approval and even if it doesn’t this will be a long road if for no other reason that large scale efficacy on a disease that progresses so slowly will take lots of time but this is a glimmer of the dawn of a new day, not just against HIV/AIDS, which still kills far too many people around the globe, but also for the fight against so many other tricky, nasty, viruses out there still out to get us.