Study finds unique HIV vaccine formula elicits strong immune...( WORCESTER Mass.Today Advanced BioSci...),Health

WORCESTER, Mass.Today, Advanced BioScience Laboratories, Inc. (ABL) and the University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS) report that their unique HIV vaccine formulation was effective in eliciting strong and balanced immune responses in healthy human volunteers. The findings are published in the journal Vaccine (Cross-subtype antibody and cellular immune responses induced by a polyvalent DNA primeprotein boost HIV-1 vaccine in healthy human volunteers, Vaccine online, May 22, 2008) In light of these initial findings, additional assays on volunteers samples were done by researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, independently confirming the presence of long lasting and high quality T cell responses against HIV antigens. Results from this confirmatory study are currently available online in the Journal of Virology (April 30, 2008).

In this phase I clinical trial, sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), volunteers first received three injections of a DNA vaccine which expresses protective antigens from the HIV virus, followed by two injections of a protein vaccine whose components matched those included in the DNA vaccine. The report in Vaccine is the first scientific article in which a DNA prime-protein boost combination vaccination method is tested in humans for HIV vaccine development. Scientists at ABL and UMMS and their collaborators discovered that this combination approach is highly effective in inducing strong antibody and cell-mediated immune responses in human volunteers.

Given the challenges of developing a vaccine against HIV, scientists have long believed that a final, effective HIV vaccine will require the induction of balanced responses from both arms of human immune system. Our results demonstrate that it is feasible to use this combination approach to achieve this objective, said Phillip Markham, PhD, of ABL, the Principal Investigator (PI) on this vaccine developmen
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