Kamis, 05 Juli 2012

T-cell Vaccines Finally Enter Test Phase


Though we now have access to numerous vaccines against a wide range of diseases, there are still conditions (both infectious and chronic) that cannot be addressed via the type of immune system activation that regular vaccines trigger. Now, experts take a critical step forward in addressing this situation.

Over the past several years, scientists have been working towards creating T-cell based vaccines. These cells are naturally occurring parts of the human immune system. The idea is that they produce a different type of immune response than regular vaccines.

As such, they could be used to hunt down and kill microbes that hide within individual cells, for example, or to address a large number of chronic illnesses. While T-cell-based vaccines are far from flawless, and not 100 percent effective, they are better at preventing and controlling chronic infections.

Transitioning this class of vaccines from the lab to the clinic has thus far proven to be a fruitless effort. Investigators at Genocea, a biotech company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, have recently made an important step forward in this line of research.

They have recently announced that they plan to begin the first clinical trial of an experimental, T-cell vaccine against herpes, later in 2012. Other diseases that could be addressed using this approach include AIDS, malaria, and chlamydia.

The reason why these conditions are so severe is basically that the pathogens which trigger them are able to evade surveillance by antibodies in the blood. The latter are agents of the immune system that bind to invading organisms, and mark them for destruction.

“In order to deal with those types of pathogens, oftentimes we have to stimulate what we call cellular immunity. Unlike antibody immunity, which recognizes pathogens directly, cellular immunity has to recognize the infected cell and get rid of your own infected cells,” expert Darren Higgins explains.

The investigator, a co-founder of Genocea, is an expert on host-pathogen interactions and a biologist at the Harvard Medical School (HMS). He explains that cellular immunity is driven by T-cells.

If successful, the herpes simplex 2 T-cell-based vaccine that Genocea is developing could help more than a billion people. Current statistics estimate that 1 in 6 people has the virus that causes this condition. At this time, antiviral therapies against it keep it in check, but fail to destroy it.

Regularly, the development of a new vaccine can take up to 30 years (10 in research and testing, and 20 until it reaches the actual market), but Genocea plans to speed things up considerably, Technology Review reports.

Via: T-cell Vaccines Finally Enter Test Phase

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