Vaccine Guru

The resurgence of the measles epidemic, largely blamed on parents who have not vaccinated their kids, has brought to light, the fear that vaccines can cause harm. There need not be a debate on whether one should be vaccinated or not. It is a fact that vaccines have saved lives in several countries over the years. The scientific community along with academics and the pharmaceutical industry should partner up with people at the community level and educate them on the benefits of being vaccinated. The recent failure of the flu vaccine to confer protection and the adverse side effects of Gardasil vaccine against HPV has only perpetuated the idea that vaccines do not benefit people but only line the pockets of the rich.   Similar to the campaign started against the tobacco industry using images of tobacco users suffering from various cancers, a campaign for use of vaccines should be initiated. Images of patients suffering from various vaccine-preventable diseases s...

A high profile paper by Picker and colleagues that was publicized widely now has been panned for its lack of proper statistical analysis, cherry picking of data etc etc. The anonymous writer and analyst commented on PubPeer that the Paper has several holes: The link is as follows: https://pubpeer.com/publications/C8D982830E18E0D289F0CF103876E3#fb21451 I am copying and pasting the entire comment here and wish the readers to follow up on these comments and post their views: The comment is as follows: HIV continues to bear a heavy toll on society with a disproportionate number of infections and deaths occurring in developing countries. Development of a safe and effective vaccine is clearly needed and several vaccine approaches are in clinical and preclinical development. Those of us in the HIV field hope to see an effective vaccine be developed that will prevent HIV infection and one of the most promising candidates to date is a T cell vaccine that utilizes recombinant rh...

A promising new study shows that a recombinant chimp adenovirus-3 vaccine vector carrying the surface glycoproteins of Zaire and Sudan strains of Ebola virus was safe and immunogenic in 20 volunteers. There were 11 women and 9 men in the study and the ages ranged from 25-50. Results 1. What looked really promising was that in about 70-90% of the participants, the vaccine induced antibodies to  Zaire and Sudan glycoproteins. 2. Glycoprotein-specific memory CD4 and CD8 T cell responses were polyfunctional and the vaccine elicited high proportions of CD8 cells co-producing interferon-g and TNF. 3. Pre-existing antibodies against adenovirus-3 did not significantly correlated with the magnitude of vaccine-induced memory CD4 T cell response. Remarks * While the CD4 T cell shows no significant change in cytokine response with increased particle units, the polyfunctionality of CD8 T cells shows a significant change. * The graphs representing "Total Cytokine Response shown a...

In a recent study from the Zoster-015 HZ/su study group headed by GSK,  a Phase I/II randomized, placebo controlled study to evaluate the safety and immunogenicity of an investigational herpes zoster subunit vaccine was performed. To briefly provide a background to the study, the incidence of shingles in HIV-infected adults is 10-20 times higher than in an age-matched general population. This reduced upon the introduction of anti-retroviral therapy but remains 3-5 times higher than in the general population. Vaccination offers protection against shingles and its complications in HIV-infected patients but the use of the vaccine in immunocompromised individuals is fraught with risk due to the potential to cause disease. This necessitated a need to develop a subunit vaccine against shingles. Method: Vaccine: The subunit vaccine consisted of the VZv gE antigen along with an adjuvant. The vaccine was  administered to HIV+ patients who were ART/high CD4, ART/low CD4 and ART n...

Google Doodle celebrates Dr Salk, who developed one of the best and most effective vaccines ever.

A recent article found on finalcall.com is making the rounds on social media.  In a nutshell, the Minister of the Nation of Islam claims that the western world conducted a massive clinical trial of an Ebola vaccine just before the latest  outbreak in West Africa that killed several thousands. Again conspiracy theorists are out to make Ebola as a man-made disaster that is killing Africans. There are some true facts in the story, particularly those about ZMapp being made available to a select few and not available to a large number of patients, especially poor Africans! It would have created quite an outrage if the ZMapp antibody was administered to poor Africans and many died!! The fact that it was tried on some Americans point to the fact that ZMapp did not want to be named and shamed as a company that uses poor Africans as guinea pigs. It is pathetic that scientific facts are not debated intelligently before publication in obscure publications that promote conspiracy theor...

Nobel Laureate David Baltimore presented his findings  at the Lou Siminovitch Lecture in Toronto and gave a glimpse of all the recent findings related to the plethora of antibodies that are known to bind to HIV. Many of these have broad specificities and high affinities. It is a fun time for antibody research considering the advances made in deciphering the crystal structure of the viral glycoprotein. Baltimore introduced the work of his lab, particularly that of Alex Balazs, in developing a novel form of therapeutics. Termed "Vectored ImmunoProphylaxis" or VIP, the concept is that of getting the body to make antibodies against the virus. Basically, Baltimore and Balazs engineered an Adeno-associated Virus (AAV) which has a small genome to express the heavy and light chains of their favourite antibody. This could be against HIV, Hepatitis or Malaria. The virus is injected into the muscle of mice where the vector starts expressing the antibody protein. When the mouse is...