HIV Vaccine Safe Enough To Pass Phase 1 Human Trials 141
An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from Western University in Canada:
"The first human applied clinical study (SAV CT 01) using a genetically modified killed whole-virus vaccine (SAV001-H) to evaluate its safety and tolerability was initiated in March 2012. This study is a randomized, observer-blinded, placebo-controlled study of killed whole HIV-1 vaccine (SAV001-H) following intramuscular (IM) administration. Infected men and women, 18-50 years of age, have been enrolled in this study and randomized into two treatment groups to administer killed whole HIV-1 vaccine (SAV001-H) or placebo. Sumagen announced today the patient enrollment has progressed smoothly and there have been no adverse effects observed including local reactions, signs/symptoms and laboratory toxicities after SAV001-H injection in all enrolled patients to date. With these interim results, the SAV001-H has proven safety and tolerability in humans and given Sumagen confidence for the next clinical trials to prove its immunogenicity and efficacy evaluation."
What is Jenny McCarthy going to say? (Score:5, Insightful)
Along with the anti-vaccine nutters?
Clearly using real HIV viruses must be very risky and dangerous
Re:Vaccinating People Already Infected? (Score:2, Insightful)
Because if the vaccine is still active in any way, it can't infect anyone further.
Re:Vaccinating People Already Infected? (Score:5, Insightful)
Phase 1 trials are the "prove the vaccine doesn't give you AIDS" (or cause other medical problems) stage of things.
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
A very small percentage of the population makes them. One option for a vaccine is to try and hack that immunity into the rest of us.
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
As I understand it, humans will always produce antibodies to fight infections like HIV. Unfortunatly, the antibodies that humans normally produce in the attempt to neutralize and HIV infection don't appear to be very good at it. [caltech.edu] The short story is that somehow HIV evolved to avoid having many fewer binding locations so the most effective "Y" shaped antibodies cannot effectively attach bivalently (in two places). This bivalent attach is apparently the most common strategies used by our immune system.
Apparently some people can make more potent antibodies called bNAbs, but often HIV mutates to avoid these as well, but sometimes there are successes.
I'm unclear on why this new Canadian/Korean HIV vaccine would be any better at bootstrapping the immune system than the most recent failed attempts. The only novel part that I can tell about this, is that they are using "whole" (but genetically modified) HIV instead of putting HIV protein genes codings into more common viruses, but if HIV is as crafty as it seems to be, this may only be a simple shot-in-the-dark hope that somehow bootstrapping the immune system will allow the body to come up with a way to fight off HIV before it gets a chance to overwhelm the immune system. Color me skeptical as that was what the other vaccines attempted to do, but it's not clear that this will be a successful route.
Re:What is Jenny McCarthy going to say? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:you need to know (Score:1, Insightful)
Sorry, but no. If a woman becomes pregnant and wants to keeps the child while the man wants an abortion then that child should be the sole responsibility of the woman. She chose to have sex too, she chose not to use any kind of birth control too and ultimately she decided that she wanted to keep the child.
No more of this inequality. This bullshit were a woman can basically trap a man for his money or his life by forcing him to have her child with her.