Vaccine
Vaccine - Scientists at UCL have significantly boosted the effectiveness of a therapeutic vaccine designed to control chronic hepatitis B (HBV) infection, after uncovering and thwarting 'the enemy within'. Published in Science Translational Medicine , researchers say the findings in mice are a breakthrough in the field of vaccine development, as they reveal how to enhance the antiviral T cell response that therapeutic vaccines are intended to trigger. This has been long-time problem and puzzle for immunologists around the world. While there is an effective prophylactic ( preventative) HBV vaccine to prevent new cases, this study focused on how to enhance the response to therapeutic vaccines (those administered after a disease or infection has already occurred) among the estimated 240 million people who are already chronically infected. Chronic HBV is the most common cause of liver cancer in the world, and each year globally, the infection causes an estimated 880,000 deaths from liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma/liver cancer (HCC). For the study, mice with chronic HBV were vaccinated with ChAdOx1-HBV, Vaccitech, Oxford, which is currently being tested in Phase II trials in humans. Researchers found that removing natural killer (NK) cells, a white blood cell that normally fights infection, boosted the response of the antiviral CD8+ T cells induced by the therapeutic vaccination and enhanced the control of HBV.
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