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发帖数: 1822 | 1 London’s great HIV/AIDS hope
By CHIP MARTIN, THE LONDON FREE PRESS
Last Updated: December 20, 2011 10:51pm
http://www.lfpress.com/news/london/2011/12/20/19147301.html
Researchers at the University of Western Ontario are hoping a fourth time's
the charm to develop an effective vaccine to combat HIV/AIDS.
Tuesday, in a breakthrough announcement, they said they've received approval
to try an entirely new formula on humans.
By following a line of research that successfully produced vaccines for
polio, rabies and hepatitis A, they hope to have a serum available to fight
HIV/AIDS in about five years, if all goes well.
The world's three other attempts to develop vaccines since 2003 all failed.
London research has been funded by Sumagen Canada Inc., a subsidiary of
Korean pharmaceutical giant Sumagen Co. Ltd.
HIV/AIDS has claimed 28 million lives worldwide since it was identified
nearly 30 years ago. More than another 35 million people are living with the
virus that attacks the immune system.
While HIV/AIDS is being controlled in North America, it is ravaging Africa.
Starting next month, 40 HIV-positive volunteers will begin clinical trials,
just approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration. Those
trials will be followed by tests on 6,600 HIV-negative, but high-risk
volunteers, testing immune responses and effectiveness of the vaccine in two
more phases.
"I feel happy and comfortable to initiate this human-clinical trial," said
chief researcher Chil-Yong Kang, a professor of microbiology and immunology
at the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry at UWO.
It'll be five years before the vaccine could be made available to the
general public, provided all testing goes well, he said.
Kang said approval by the FDA is key because the agency has strict standards
generally regarded as a world standard.
Unlike other research aimed at developing a vaccine, the Western team uses
viruses it kills and genetically modifies to make them safe. Part of that
process involves using white blood cells and the melittin protein from
honeybees to help cultivate the vaccine.
Other attempts have used live viruses, because that route was successful in
developing vaccines to combat mumps, measles and smallpox.
Kang said researchers in London had to conduct 230 different tests to
satisfy the FDA, some involving primates, to ensure the vaccine would be
safe to use on humans.
"To have this approval is a very important stage," Kang said.
The vaccine is being produced at special "bio-safety Level 3" laboratories
in Maryland and Colorado because no lab in Canada is properly qualified, he
said.
Sumagen Canada has secured patents to the vaccine in more than 70 countries
through WORLDdiscoveries, Western's technology-transfer office.
Western president Amit Chakma said the latest move marks "a major
development in our fight against HIV/AIDS."
He noted the announcement comes on the heels of a $1 million donation from a
Western professor to give new hope to Africans living with HIV/AIDS. The
gift from Marianne Larsen, from an inheritance, will provide disease-
fighting probiotic yogurt, developed in London, to as many as 1,100 people
in Tanzania and East Africa each day for the next 10 years.
The inability to find a vaccine since HIV/AIDS was first observed "has not
been because of a lack of effort," Chakma said. "It is because it is a
complex challenge."
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ABOUT THE VACCINE
Attempts to develop a vaccine in 2003, 2007 and 2009 failed;
Western's is a new approach, using one similar to that used to develop
vaccines for polio, influenza, rabies, hepatitis A, Japanese encephalitis
for humans and 16 vaccines to prevent viral diseases in animals.
The approach uses human immunodeficiency viruses that are killed, then
genetically modified to be safe and cultivated with protein from
honeybees. |
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