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MONDAY, Nov. 17 (HealthDayNews) -- Researchers are taking a careful first step toward a vaccine for hepatitis C, the liver-damaging virus that infects an estimated 2.7 million Americans and kills an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 of them each year.
An experimental vaccine developed by Chiron Corp. is being injected into 45 healthy volunteers, whose reactions will be monitored for a year, says Dr. Robert B. Belshe, director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Saint Louis University School of Medicine in St. Louis, where the experiment is being done.
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The hope is this first trial, which focuses on the vaccine's safety and its ability to arouse the body's immune defenses, will lead to a product that can be used to protect people at high risk of being infected by the virus, which can be spread by sexual contact but mostly is transmitted by contaminated blood, Belshe says.
The road ahead is a long one, he warns, but at the same time he and other researchers are encouraged by the fact that any candidate vaccine is available.
The Saint Louis facility is one of the vaccine units funded by the National Institutes of Health, which participated in development of the vaccine. One reason why it was chosen for the trial is that "we have several people here who are experts on hepatitis viruses."
One of those experts is Dr. Adrian M. Di Bisceglie, chief of hepatology. The hepatitis C virus is a difficult target because "it mutates a lot and also because it is not a strong stimulator of the body's immune system," he says.
"Only now, 15 years after the hepatitis C virus was identified, do we have vaccines that we hope can be effective," Di Bisceglie says.
The vaccine uses bioengineered versions of proteins on the surface of the virus. It is designed to attract antibodies, defensive molecules produced by the immune system, and also to stimulate attack by immune system cells. Page: 1 | 2 | Next >>
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