Tomboy and other researchers in here I think you may enjoy this one. Results from Proffesor Frazers Lab and mice are involved.!
Sorry for a long post other HC members , but if you are interested in the Admedus HSV vaccine currently in Phase 2 trial and what is just behind it in the form of the HPV "cuop de gras " which will follow the success of Gardasil, it may be relevant for you.
It relates to a difficult issue Prof. Frazer dealt, with recorded back in 2009 when this interview was made available on an Australian Academy of Science report.
Getting the same response in humans as was achieved with the mice in the lab. It relates more to the HPV vaccine but the scientific breakthrough may/probably plays through into the HSV vaccine as well.
I have extracted some relevant text below and referenced the website so anyone can read the full, and very interesting interview from which this text was extracted. Extracts are from way down the bottom end if you are reading it in a rush.
The bottom line was that the now successful HPV vaccine, whilst well designed, was not " turning on" and going into battle with the target virus.
To quote Prof Frazer. So the vaccines makes the right sort of response, but they don't go out and do anything."
This is relevant in terms of the Tcell activation admedus refers to in their announcements following the HSV phase 1 trial.
Prof. Frazer goes onto say..
"So what we've been learning is strategies for overcoming that problem, and at least now in the animal models we can overcome it. We know what we need to do to get past this, and the nice thing is we could actually do it in a patient as well."!!!
Upon more questioning from the interviewer the Prof comments
"But for these things we actually could do it in a human, so we're hoping to go into clinical trials with that next year."
Thanks to us AHZ investors those clinical trials belatedly, are in place.
"In the lab we are working on immunotherapeutics, and I have to say I am very encouraged that we're getting some much better results now than we were 10 or 15 years ago. In those days I thought it would be easy, and I was wrong – as I usually am in science [laugh] but that's how you learn. And what we've learned is that the real problem is not with the vaccines. We can get the right sort of immune responses with the vaccines, something to kill an infected cell. But, for some reason or other, the immune cells that we induce won't go and do the job in a real person in the way that they will in the lab.
We have learned that in principle that's because the local environment, where the virus is, instructs the immune system to ignore it. This seems to be a universal problem for immunotherapeutics, not just for papilloma virus infection but for other viruses, and also for cancer cells where there are proteins expressed which the immune system could be interested in. Basically, the immune system has a default 'off' position – in other words, it doesn't do anything unless it's specifically instructed to do it. So the vaccines make the right sort of response, but they don't go out and do anything.
So what we've been learning is strategies for overcoming that problem, and at least now in the animal models we can overcome it. We know what we need to do to get past this, and the nice thing is we could actually do it in a patient as well.
Even the men?
Yes, even the men. There are strategies which could be used in real people to do what we're doing in animals. A lot of the time you do something in a mouse and say, 'Well, you could never do that in a human.' But for these things we actually could do it in a human, so we're hoping to go into clinical trials with that next year."
Tomboy...even if the mice attempted a lie the Prof seems to have a fix!
Fox
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