IPFS News Link • Drugs and Medications
T-cell Vaccines Could Treat Elusive Diseases
• http://www.technologyreview.com, Susan YoungA Cambridge, Massachusetts, biotech company called Genocea thinks its high-throughput method could change that. The company will begin its first clinical trial later this year, when its experimental herpes vaccine will be the first test of its claims.
All existing vaccines rouse the body into creating antibodies that attach to the surface of infecting microbes and flag them for destruction. But pathogens that live inside our cells, such as the viruses, bacteria, and other microbes that cause AIDS, malaria, herpes, and chlamydia, can evade this surveillance. "In order to deal with those types of pathogens, oftentimes we have to stimulate what we call cellular immunity. Unlike antibody immunity, which recognizes pathogens directly, cellular immunity has to recognize the infected cell and get rid of your own infected cells," says Darren Higgins, a biologist at Harvard Medical School who studies the interaction between hosts and pathogens and is a cofounder of Genocea.