Johnson & Johnson HIV Vaccine Trial Fails

Looks like Johnson & Johnson will have to go back to the drawing board.

The company announced Tuesday that its clinical trial of an experimental HIV vaccine had failed to provide sufficient protection for young women in sub-Saharan Africa who were at high risk of acquiring HIV. J&J explained that its Imbokodo study posed no safety concerns, but will not continue. According to The Hill, the study enrolled approximately 2,600 young women across five countries in sub-Saharan Africa, a region where women and girls accounted for 63 percent of all new HIV infections in 2020. Participants were randomly selected to receive either the vaccine or a placebo. Although researchers found the vaccine’s efficacy was only about 25 percent, it was just not statistically significant.

“Although this is certainly not the study outcome for which we had hoped, we must apply the knowledge learned from the Imbokodo trial,” said Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

Mitchell Warren, executive director of AVAC, an HIV prevention advocacy group, also said in a statement: “This is in no way the end of the search for an HIV vaccine.”