# Modeling the Evolutionary and Public Health Impacts of HIV Adaptation in Response to Vaccination

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON · 2020 · $422,179

## Abstract

ABSTRACT
Despite the existence of effective methods for prevention, HIV continues to be a global health crisis. The need
for an HIV vaccine remains paramount. The phase III RV144 vaccine trial is the only trial of an HIV vaccine that
showed modest success in preventing infection, with an estimated 31% vaccine efficacy at 3.5 years post-
enrollment. However, vaccines can result in the emergence and spread of vaccine-resistant strains, via natural
selection and strain replacement. The potential for such population-level adaptation in HIV has not been
considered in HIV vaccine-related modeling studies. Our recent work in HIV evolutionary and epidemic modeling
suggests that HIV may adapt rapidly in response to a partially effective vaccine similar to RV144. Our goal for
this project is to predict the potential population-level impact of an HIV evolutionary response to vaccination.
First, we will extend our existing HIV epidemic model (EvoNetHIV) to incorporate a broad set of vaccine-related
parameters. Second, we will use this model to quantify outcomes of viral adaptation and predict public health
impact across the set of vaccine-related parameters. We expect that incorporating a vaccine-specific
evolutionary framework into our HIV epidemic model will substantially improve predictions related to the public
health impact of HIV vaccination programs. We also expect that, due to our open source software philosophy,
our evolutionary approach will be easily integrated into the epidemic models of other scientific groups.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9988365
- **Project number:** 5R01AI150467-04
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
- **Principal Investigator:** John E. Mittler
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $422,179
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2017-09-15 → 2021-11-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9988365

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9988365, Modeling the Evolutionary and Public Health Impacts of HIV Adaptation in Response to Vaccination (5R01AI150467-04). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-06-01 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9988365. Licensed CC0.

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