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FDA Approves Human Hookworm Vaccine for Phase I Safety Trials

As any dedicated video game player knows, the first requireme...

Research advances quest for HIV-1 vaccine

Scientists have uncovered new information that may help guide design of vaccines for HIV-1, the virus that causes AIDS. A new detailed structural analysis of the complex formed by an anti-HIV antibody called 4E10 and its specific target provides insight into why this particular antibody is so broadly effective, a rare characteristic for HIV discovered thus far. The research is published in the Fe...

A much-needed shot in the arm for HIV vaccine development

International efforts towards developing avaccine against HIV infection have been given a much-needed boost bythe publication today of the Global HIV/AIDS Vaccine Enterprise'sscientific strategic plan, published online in the freely available,open-access global health journal PLoS Medicine.The Global HIV/AIDS Vaccine Enterprise is an international alliance ofindependent agencies and organiz...

Live Recombinant Adenovirus Vaccine Technique Explored

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health are exploring ways to develop new vaccines for a variety of illnesses using genetically modified adenoviruses, a common cause of respiratory infections. Oral adenovirus vaccines have long been proven to be safe and effective. The researchers believe their process for constructing a replicating live recombinant adenovirus could lea...

Discovery of key protein's shape could lead to improved bacterial pneumonia vaccine

Scientists at St. Jude Children's ResearchHospital have discovered that the shape of a protein on the surface ofpneumonia bacteria helps these germs invade the human bloodstream. Thisfinding, published Dec. 16 online by the EMBO Journal, could helpscientists develop a vaccine that is significantly more effective atprotecting children against the disease. The St. Jude researchersdetermined t...

Gene Vaccine Protects Mice Against Development Of Her2/neu Breast Cancer

Based on successful animal studies, a novelvaccine that uses immune cells as factories to produce Her2/neu proteinmay offer a way to treat some human breast cancers, say researchers atThe University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. [Ed : is a protein often present / surexpressed in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/...

NIAID Initiates Trial of Experimental Avian Flu Vaccine

Fast-track recruitment has begun for a trial to investigate the safety of a vaccine against H5N1 avian influenza, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), announced today. Sites in Rochester, NY, Baltimore and Los Angeles will enroll a total of 450 healthy adults. The clinical sites are part of the NIAID-sponsored V...

Gene vaccine for Alzheimer's disease shows promising results

UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallasresearchers have found a way of stimulating the immune systems of miceto fight against amyloid proteins that cause the devastating plaquesthat are characteristic of Alzheimer's disease.For years scientists have examined the possibility of using aprotein-based vaccine to slow the progression of the disease in itsearly stages. UT Southwestern researcher...

Study Models Impact Of Anthrax Vaccine

Rapidly distributing antibiotics to peopleexposed to anthrax spores during a bioterrorist attack, could byitself, prevent about 70 percent of anthrax infections from occurring,according to researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School ofPublic Health. To increase the prevention rate to 90 percent, theirstudy found that at least 63 percent of the population would need to beimmunized wi...

Influenza vaccine uses insect cells to speed development

Using a strategy involving a genetically modified baculovirus and caterpillar cells scientists from Protein Sciences Corporation have been able to speed up a key step in the development of an experimental cell-based influenza vaccine. They report their findings today at the 2005 American Society for Microbiology Biodefense Research Meeting. "The bird flu may become the next flu pandemic st...

New Insights Into HIV Immunity Suggest Alternative Approach to Vaccines

New insights by Duke University Medical Center researchers as to how HIV evades the human immune system may offer a new approach for developing HIV vaccines. The findings suggest some HIV vaccines may have failed because they induce a class of antibodies that a patient's own immune system is programmed to destroy. The Duke team discovered that certain broadly protective antibodies, which...

Pathogen-Mimicking Vaccine As Strategy For Cancer Therapy

Results from the first clinical trial of a therapeutic cancer vaccine combining the synthetic bacterial DNA sequence, CpG 7909 (ProMuneTM, Coley Pharmaceutical), with a peptide antigen were reported today in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. The paper shows that the CpG 7909 DNA sequence is safe, and increases the immune system's ability to recognize and destroy cancer cells. The Phase I stu...

Norovirus, AIDS vaccine and Hepatitis Virus

Norovirus Prevalent in Those Suffering from Traveler's Diarrhea It is estimated that 20 to 50 percent of the pe...

HIV vaccine trial breaks ground for future research

The results of the world's first phase 3 HIV vaccine efficacy trial are reported in the March 1 issue of The Journal of Infectious Diseases, now available online. Although the vaccine was ineffective in preventing HIV infection, the trial represents a landmark in the fight against HIV and offers the scientific community a foundation on which to build future trials. The multi-centered tria...

Live vaccines more effective against horse herpes virus

Following the recent deadly outbreak of equine herpes virus at Churchill Downs, home of the Kentucky Derby, a Cornell University virologist says his preliminary research indicates that vaccines containing weakened live viruses, called modified live vaccines (MLV), appear to be more effective in preventing horse herpes than other more widely used vaccines. "It's important that people know t...

NIAID begins clinical trial of West Nile virus vaccine

A small trial testing the safety of an experimental vaccine targeting West Nile virus (WNV) opened today at the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) Clinical Center in Bethesda, MD. The vaccine, which will be tested first in 15 healthy adult volunteers, was developed for human clinical studies by researchers at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases' (NIAID) Vaccine Research C...

Designing vaccines by computer

Having vaccines developed by computer may sound unnerving but the increasing role of computer modelling in the development of new vaccines could bring new products onto the market quicker, benefiting patients and saving pharmaceutical companies millions of pounds. Researchers using informatics and computer modelling can help scientists to uncover and harness the hidden patterns in the weal...

Wake Forest scientists find new combination vaccine effective against plague

Plague, a bacterium that ravaged Europe in the Middle Ages and is today one of the most feared potential agents of bio-terrorism, may have met its match, according to Wake Forest University School of Medicine scientists. Steven B. Mizel, Ph.D., principal investigator, told the American Gastroenterological Association meeting in Chicago that when mice immunized with a new combination vaccin...

'EuroVacc 02' HIV Vaccine Trial Begins

Lausanne, Switzerland and London, United Kingdom, February 16, 2005 -- The European Vaccine Effort against HIV/AIDS today announced that a phase I clinical trial of novel investigational vaccines...

Active Vaccine Prevents Mice From Developing Prion Disease

NYU School of Medicine scientists have created the first active vaccine that can significantly delay and possibly prevent the onset of a brain disease in mice that is similar to mad cow disease. The new findings, published online this week in the journal Neuroscience, could provide a platform for the development of a vaccine to prevent a group of fatal brain diseases caused by unusual infectious...

New vaccine means bye-bye to bacteria in the lung

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a bacterium that can cause respiratory tract infections, which can be life threatening in patients who have cystic fibrosis. It is therefore important to develop a vaccine against this pathogen. Appearing online on 1 April 2005 in advance of print publication of the May issue of The Journal of Clinical Investigation, Ronald Crystal and colleagues from Cornell University...

Studies reveal how plague disables immune system, and how to exploit the process to make a vaccine

Two studies by researchers at the University of Chicago show how the bacteria that cause the plague manage to outsmart the immune system and how, by slightly altering one of the microbe's tools, the researchers produced what may be the first safe and effective vaccine. Both papers -- one published online July 28 in Science Express and one in the August issue of Infection and Immunity -- fo...

UN pours polio vaccine into Yemen amid outbreak

As Yemen geared up for an end-of-month nationwide campaign to immunize all children under 5 against a fast-moving paralytic poliovirus outbreak, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said it was shipping in 6 million doses of polio vaccine. In addition, 10 experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) are working with national coordinators and helping to train vaccinators and sup...

Fragile US vaccine system needs improvement despite dramatic gains in health over past century

A comprehensive system of vaccine development in the U.S. resulted in a reduction of 87 to more than 99 percent in illness from ten vaccine-preventable diseases during the twentieth century. These dramatic successes should not be taken for granted, however, as the vaccine system now faces numerous challenges in manufacturing and development, according to a review article in the May/June issue of...

New Vaccine To Be Used For First Time In Polio Outbreak Response

Eighteen new cases of polio have today been announced in Yemen, bringing the reported total number associated with an outbreak in the country to 22. Yemen had been polio-free since disease surveillance began in 1996 - a genetic investigation is ongoing to determine the precise origin of the outbreak. Experts fear that the number of cases will rise in the immediate future. Teams of WHO and...

New vaccine protects more effectively against tuberculosis

Max Planck researchers uncover the mechanism by which the new genetically engineered vaccine functionsThe vaccine has been licensed to the Vakzine Projekt Management who will test it in clinical trials early 2006. The responsible mechanisms for the high efficacy of this vaccine has now been deciphered (Journal of Clinical Investigations, August 18, 2005). Globally, tuberculosis remains th...

Improving the potential of cancer vaccines

A special stretch of genetic material may turn off the immune suppression that stymies attempts to fight cancer with a vaccine, said researchers at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) at Houston. In a report in today's issue of the journal Science, Dr. Rong-Fu Wang, a professor in the BCM Center for Cell and Gene Therapy and Department of Immunology, and his colleagues describe a new strategy...

Fragment of yellow fever virus may hold key to safer vaccine

In one of the first molecular studies of the human antibody response to yellow fever, Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) researchers and their colleagues have found the crucial bit of virus that people's immune systems need to spot and quash this often-fatal re-emerging disease. The findings may help scientists improve the existing vaccine, which has rare but severe side effects, said...

Updated data on novel HPV vaccine confirms efficacy in large population

Updated data from a study on a promising new vaccine against a pre-cancerous cervical virus shows superior efficacy in preventing cervical pre-cancers and non-invasive cervical cancer, according to a study presented today during the American Association for Cancer Research's 4th Annual Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research meeting in Baltimore. Final results of the phase III study, ori...

High-dose flu vaccines appear to safely boost immunity in elderly

High-dose influenza vaccines may increase elderly patients' immune response without significant adverse effects, offering this vulnerable population additional protection against the flu, according to an article in the May 22 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. Vaccines containing inactivated influenza virus have been available for 50 years to prevent...

Experimental vaccine protects lab animals against several strains of H5N1

Nations are preparing to stockpile vaccines against H5N1, the strain of influenza virus that experts fear could cause the next flu pandemic. But will these vaccines remain effective as the virus mutates? Researchers present good news in the July 15 issue of The Journal of Infectious Diseases, now available online. Elena Govorkova, MD, PhD, Robert G. Webster, PhD, and coworkers at St. Jude...

Boosting The BCG Vaccine To Beat Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis remains a major global health threat. Although more than 3 billion doses of the BCG vaccine have been administered to fight tuberculosis, the ability of the BCG vaccine to protect adults is very limited, as is its efficacy against newly emerging isolates. In a study appearing online on August 18 in advance of print publication of the September 1 issue of the Journal of Clinica...

A vaccine to kill tapeworm

A Vaccine for pigs could help save the 50,000 people a year in poor countries killed by a gruesome parasite. Initial trials suggest it is nearly 100 per cent effective. The vaccine, developed by a team at the University of Melbourne, Australia, targets a tapeworm called Taenia solium. The adult form, caught from eating undercooked pork, grows only inside the human intestine, stealing nutri...

Hospitalizations because of chicken pox down dramatically since implementation of vaccine

Since the introduction of the varicella (chicken pox) vaccine in 1995, hospitalizations and doctor visits because of chicken pox have dropped dramatically, according to a study in the August 17 issue of JAMA. Varicella vaccine is recommended for routine immunization of children aged 12 to 18 months and for older susceptible children and adults in the United States, according to background...

Visceral Leishmaniasis: Successful Vaccine Trial In Dogs

Visceral leishmaniasis, which is the most severe form of that group of diseases, affects 500 000 people in the world each year. It is caused by a protozoan, Leishmania infantum, transmitted by sand fly bites. There is no vaccine for this disease, which can rapidly lead to death if no treatment is given. In the most heavily affected areas, the dog population is hit heavily by infection. It acts as...

Vaccine targets tumors where they live

Vaccine strategies are being designed to battle cancer, but their use for metastatic melanoma is a challenge. Effective vaccines against established tumors require tumor-reactive T cells to traffic to the sites of the tumors and are locally activated there in order to kill cancer cells. A problem is that the T cells lose their tumor-killing power once they reach the environment surrounding the tu...

Breast tumors in mice eradicated using cancer vaccine

Findings could lead to new immune therapy for breast cancer A team from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine has shown that by using a cancer vaccine based on the bacterium Listeria monocytogenes, they can cure mice with established breast tumors. Cancer vaccines, which are more properly described as immunotherapy, work by boosting an immune response against tumor-associated...

Experimental shingles vaccine proves effective in nationwide study

In one of the largest adult vaccine clinical trials ever, researchers have found that an experimental vaccine against shingles (zoster vaccine) prevented about half of cases of shingles--a painful nerve and skin infection--and dramatically reduced its severity and complications in vaccinated persons who got the disease. The findings appear in the June 2 issue of The New England Journal of Medicin...

Survey Uncovers Surprising Attitudes Towards HIV Vaccine Research

A survey of U.S. adults has found that a majority believe that HIV vaccines are the best hope for controlling the global AIDS epidemic and are confident such vaccines can be made. But while most of those surveyed felt it personally important to help support HIV vaccine research, a majority expressed reluctance to support a friend or family member’s participation in an HIV vaccine clinical trial.<...

UW scientists report a new method to speed bird flu vaccine production

In the event of an influenza pandemic, the world's vaccine manufacturers will be in a race against time to forestall calamity. But now, thanks to a new technique to more efficiently produce the disarmed viruses that are the seed stock for making flu vaccine in large quantities, life-saving inoculations may be available more readily than before. The work is especially important as governments worl...