Johnson & Johnson announces encouraging first-in-human clinical data for investigational HIV preventive vaccine

Johnson & Johnson has announced encouraging first-in-human clinical data for an investigational HIV-1 vaccine regimen in development at its Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies. In an oral presentation of the early stage Phase 1/2a APPROACH study at the 9th IAS Conference on HIV Science (IAS 2017), the "mosaic"-based vaccine regimen from Janssen Vaccines & Prevention B.V. (Janssen) appeared to be well-tolerated and elicited HIV-1 antibody responses in 100% of healthy volunteers (n=393). "Finding a preventive vaccine has proven to be one of the biggest scientific challenges in the 35-year quest to end the HIV pandemic. A successful preventive vaccine for HIV will need to provide broad protection against a wide range of viral strains," said Professor Dan Barouch, Harvard Medical School, Director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and a key collaborator for APPROACH.