Solving HIV vaccination'a puzzle that scientists have been tackling for decades without success'could be like cracking the code to a safe. The key, they now think, may be delivering a series of different shots in a specific sequence, iteratively training the body to produce a strong, broad immune response that will endure against the fast-mutating virus, ideally for a lifetime. Figuring out which ingredients to include in those shots, and in which order, is one of the trickiest immunological conundrums that researchers have ever faced. But mRNA, the fast, flexible technology that delivered two of the world's first COVID-19 vaccines in record time, is ideal for that kind of brute-force tinkering, and may be the most important tool for getting an effective HIV vaccine, Julie McElrath, the head of the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Division at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, in Seattle, told me. Multiple mRNA-based HIV vaccines are now in clinical trials, and early data suggest that...
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