Positive Pre-Clinical Data Reported On Vaccine Designed To Combat HIV's Ability To Mutate.(Brief Article)

2001 APR 11 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) --

Epimmune Inc. (EPMN) announced on April 2, 2001, positive pre-clinical data on its HIV vaccine that is designed to directly address the problem of viral mutation.

At the Keystone Symposium titled "AIDS Vaccines in the New Millennium" company scientists reported that the vaccine stimulated multiple anti-HIV cytotoxic T-cell immune responses in animal models.

Epimmune has begun manufacturing the vaccine for human testing and plans to initiate clinical trials late this year or early 2002 in both non-infected volunteers and in individuals infected with HIV.

The current standard HIV therapy in the U.S. is a three-drug antiretroviral combination that costs approximately $15,000 per year. While antiretroviral drugs are effective at suppressing HIV replication in infected individuals, they do not eliminate the infection and have toxic side effects that impede their long-term use. A vaccine that can provide both preventive and therapeutic benefits has great potential to help control the AIDS epidemic and curtail the costs and side effects of antiretroviral therapies, the company says.

"A major challenge to the development of an effective AIDS vaccine is the ability of HIV to mutate. Epimmune's vaccine is designed to directly address this problem," said Mark Newman, PhD, Epimmune. "One of the unique features of Epimmune's vaccine is that it is composed of epitopes, or protein fragments, which are strategically selected from non-mutating regions of HIV. As a result, it is expected to be harder for the virus to develop variants that can escape the vaccine-induced immune response."

Strong cellular immunity is characteristic of long-term non-progressors or HIV positive individuals who do not progress to AIDS for long periods even without ...