U. tests new AIDS vaccine

The University Medical Center is taking the lead in the race towards finding an AIDS vaccine. On Friday the University announced that the first DNA based vaccine is currently being tested on HIV-positive patients. The vaccine is designed to delay or possibly stop the onset of AIDS in people infected with HIV. "As the first human trial of a DNA vaccine, this signal a new era in vaccine development and could revolutionize the way vaccines are produced and give, William Kelley, CEO of the University Medical Center and Health System said in a statement released to the press. The first patient in the study is a 34 year-old woman who is HIV positive. She has received her initial injection of the vaccine and is now undergoing tests as part of Phase I safety trial. Over the next year, 15 other patients will join in the study. And the patients will be placed in three groups of five, with each group taking a different dosage. The trial will last about one or two years. The brains behind the new technology is Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine David Weiner. Weiner and Apollo, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company in Malvern, Pennsylvania systematically designed these cassettes from dead strands of the HIV virus and viral proteins. The clinical trial is being conducted by Professor Ron MacGregor and Professor Stephen Gluckman, both professors of medicine and infectious disease. "The idea is to beef up the immune system against the virus and hopefully maintain [a] state of control and keep the virus infection silent," Weiner said in a September interview. Earlier studies conducted by Weiner with mice, rats, rabbits and non-human primates have demonstrated that DNA injection does indeed stimulate the immune system. But the researchers have not yet determined whether the treatment will prevent subsequent infection in HIV-positive subjects, he said. The vaccine contains HIV genes that will instruct the virus to produce two specific proteins within the patients' cells. The proteins will spark an immune response, causing the patient's bodies to produce additional antibodies and the white blood cells known as killer T cells. These so called killer T cells kill HIV infected cells. "While this study is for HIV, if the approach is safe and successful, it could change the way we think of vaccines," Weiner said in a press statement. "This approach appears to have promise not only as a preventive measure against infection, but also as a treatment for many varied diseases." Some other possible diseases the vaccine could attack include hepatitis, tuberculosis, certain cancers and autoimminue diseases. Weiner and his colleagues were given a $4.2 million grant form the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to develop the vaccine.

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