Vaccine Against Seasonal Rhinitis Is Safe.(Brief Article)

2001 APR 4 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) --

Dynavax Technologies Corporation announced preliminary results March 20, 2001, at the 57th annual meeting of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology from a Phase II clinical trial that demonstrated the safety and immunogenicity of a short-course form of immunotherapy for ragweed allergy.

The Phase II study, presented by Joseph Eiden, MD, PhD, Dynavax, explored the safety and immune response, or immunogenicity, of Dynavax's AIC in a pool of 27 ragweed-allergic adults with a history of seasonal rhinitis, or hay fever. AIC is an anti-allergy vaccine candidate composed of the major ragweed allergen, Amb a 1, linked to Dynavax's proprietary 1018 immunostimulatory DNA sequence (ISS).

In the study, AIC was administered subcutaneously in a six-injection regimen at three different dosing levels, ranging from 2.4 micrograms over a three-week period to 15 micrograms over a six-week period. The study was sponsored by Stallergenes, S.A., Dynavax's collaborator in Europe for AIC, and was conducted at the Center Hospitalier in Lyon Sud, Lyon, France, with Prof. Denis Vital Durand and Dr. F. Dieudonne as principal investigators.

Study results demonstrated that the injections of AIC were well tolerated, ...