Acambis starts preclinical work on HSV-2 vaccine

UK-based vaccines developer Acambis says it has begun preclinical assessment of a developmental herpes vaccine that it licensed from the USA's Havard University through the latter's office of technology development. The firm explained that the agent, known as d/5-29 HSV-2, is a version of one of the two predominant viral strains in which several of the genes necessary for replication and latent infection have been deleted.

Previous work, conducted by David Knipe and his team at Harvard, indicate that the vaccine can induce strong and specific HSV-2 antibody and T-cell responses, capable of preventing infection by wild-type HSV-2. Furthermore, the agent has been shown to reduce the severity of recurrent disease and to provide a degree of cross-protection against the HSV-1 strain. Dr Knipe's research also confirmed that the vaccine is unable to revert to a virulent state or become latent.

Acambis said that at present, HSV infections are treated using anti-virals that suppress replication rather than curing the infection. The firm added that the cost of such therapy to the US health care system was an estimated $1.8 billion in 2000 and is expected to reach $2.5 billion by 2015.