On February 29th at the Keystone Symposia scientific meetings held in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Epimmune announced the development of a vaccine for the prevention and treatment of Hepatitis C. The company has pioneered a new approach to vaccine development using epitopes, which are small fragments (peptides) from protein antigens that trigger an immune response.
Although there is a vaccine for both Hepatitis A and Hepatitis B, currently there is no FDA approved vaccine for prevention or control of the hepatitis C virus.
"Epimmune has a unique process for identifying, from pathogens or cancerous cells, epitopes that can be used to create vaccines for a number of serious diseases that are not currently being addressed,'' said Alessandro D. Sette, Ph.D., Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer of Epimmune.
"By combining select epitopes from the hepatitis C virus, we have designed a vaccine that will, in effect, 'train' the immune system to recognize multiple, conserved (non-mutating) regions of the virus and mount a strong cell-mediated attack."
"The emerging consensus in the scientific community is that a strong cellular immune response may be a key element in the ability that some people possess to spontaneously clear, or recover from, acute hepatitis C infection," explained Dr. Sette. A similar phenomenon is observed in so-called "long-term non-progressors," or those HIV-infected individuals who maintain an AIDS-free status for long periods even without treatment.
Working at the cellular level is nothing new for pharmaceutical companies but the research funds necessary to achieve the desired results are slowly made available for the Hepatitis C virus vaccines.
Scientists are discovering that the Hepatitis C genotypes each patient carries is very important to determine the correct procedure to developing the proper vaccines.
Epimmune is developing novel vaccines for infectious diseases and therapeutic vaccines for hepatitis C, hepatitis B and HIV, and prophylactic vaccines for hepatitis C, HIV and malaria.
For more information on Epimmune go to: http://www.epimmune.com
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