This story originally appeared on STAT, a health and medicine website that provides ambitious coverage of the coronavirus. Go here for more stories on the virus. Try STAT Plus for exclusive analysis of biotech, pharma, and the life sciences. And check out STAT’s COVID-19 tracker. Patrick Skerrett edits First Opinion, First Opinion, STAT’s perspective and opinion section, and is the host of the First Opinion Podcast.
This week marks two pandemic “anniversaries” the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic on March 11, 2020, and former President Trump declared it a national emergency two days later.
Tragically, there have been more than a half million deaths in the United States and more than 2.6 million globally since then.
For much of 2020, most people - including most experts - weren't particularly worried about the virus's ability to evolve. They just didn't know it would happen quite this fast.
For most of 2020, scientists weren't very concerned that the coronavirus would evolve. But in a few short months, variants of the virus have become a global preoccupation and a potential threat to vaccines.
Using mRNA technology to develop vaccines for HIV and beyond ConserV Bioscience and eTheRNA immunotherapies are to collaborate on development of mRNA vaccines for infectious diseases.
The initial focus of their alliance will be on the development and evaluation of mRNA vaccine formulations against human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), with the objective of identifying a lead formulation to move forward to clinical development.
An effective vaccine to prevent HIV infection has proved elusive for nearly four decades, not least because the virus constantly evolves into different strains to evade the immune system.
The parties anticipate that by combining ConserV’s and eTheRNA’s technologies, the new vaccines will induce potent immune responses to protect against highly mutagenic viruses.