Iguazu Biosciences To Develop HIV Vaccines Under License From UCSF.

2001 OCT 10 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) --

Iguazu Biosciences Corp. announced during the AIDS Vaccine 2001 Conference that it was formed to pursue research, manufacturing and clinical development of a novel generation of HIV vaccines.

The company is the exclusive worldwide licensee of a patent application covering technologies and products developed in the Laboratory of Molecular Virology of Dr. Raul Andino at the University of California of San Francisco (UCSF), one of the world's leading centers in AIDS research.

Iguazu's vaccine strategy is to use cocktails of harmless, live attenuated RNA viruses, already used as human vaccines, as vectors to express comprehensive libraries of antigens of other deadly viruses. Andino, associate professor at UCSF and chief scientific adviser to Iguazu, and his collaborators at the California Primate Center of UC Davis, published a paper in the August 2, 2001, issue of the Journal of Virology that demonstrates the feasibility of harnessing genetically engineered polioviruses to create a preventative AIDS vaccine.

The paper reports that macaque monkeys vaccinated with a cocktail of poliovirus vectors expressing antigens from simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), the animal equivalent of HIV, remained clinically healthy and in two instances showed no signs of infection by any measure after vaginal challenge with a highly virulent strain of SIV.

"We are hopeful that this new approach will provide a new weapon to fight this devastating disease," commented Andino.

Based on the encouraging animal studies reported in this paper, Iguazu is confident ...