A Vaccine For Herpes May Be Close
by on Sep.17, 2011, under Uncategorized
Providing an} inspiring piece of news from the battle against genital herpes, one of the planet’s top research firms recently revealed might} be closing in on developing a vaccine for the HSV-2 virus that causes the infection. American medical firm Agenus Inc. introduced findings from its ongoing research in June demonstrating that its new product, HerpV, successfully stopped the presence of genital herpes symptoms in men and women who participated. More impressively, the drug also appeared to prohibit the virus’ capacity to infect another person.
Why Does HerpV Work?
Without getting} too deep} into complex biology, HerpV works by triggering} an immune system response that increases cells’ capacity to detect the herpes virus. This is accomplished by introducing referred to as} a “heat shock protein”, or HSP, into the blood. As soon as it’s in the body, the HSP attaches itself onto the outside of healthy blood cells, consequently leading infected blood cells to become incompatible and incapable of attaching themselves (i.e., duplicate).
By blocking the HSV-2 virus from duplicating, HerpV effectively makes it triggering~unable to cause} outbreaks in current patients and non-contagious to herpes-negative people. This is certainly a thrilling idea} for the approximated 16% of the population now afflicted with genital herpes.
How Impressive Are Agenus’ Results?
During what} was referred to as a Phase 1 study, 100% of herpes-positive individuals who were given a HerpV shot exhibited a major elevation in antigen-specific cell immune mechanism response to the virus. In common terms, this denotes that the T cells in each and every one of the study’s subjects became immune to HSV-2 after being exposed to the HSP.
Dr. David Koelle, a professor of medicine for the University of Washington School of Medicine, offered the data for Agenus and gave the ensuing statement, “I believe these data represent the first finding of their kind in humans in genital herpes treatments.” The doctor continued on to point out, “The potential use for a therapeutic vaccine candidate such as HerpV is in managing outbreaks and ultimately disease transmission in patients with genital herpes.”
Could This} Indicate That A Vaccine Is Coming Soon?
The consequences of these early results on HerpV are tremendous. Dr. Koelle acknowledged} this point stating}, “Being able to impact and possibly decrease the spread of genital herpes would be a huge step in stemming this epidemic that affects one in six adults in the U.S.” With all of the excitement that this announcement generated, a logical question was “So, how close is the HerpV vaccine to being released to the public?”
While it might not be too far away, it is not prepared to that the vaccine will be made available to present genital herpes patients at any time in the near future. Agenus is just now launching Phase 2 of its study on the pharmaceutical’s usefulness and, as long as it proves successful, would then have to enter the FDA-approval process prior to launching the vaccine. Due to the fact this process can sometimes require years, the effort to get rid of herpes symptoms in men and women may not be as close to its end as we would like to believe.
