Vaccine Update

A vaccine against Alzheimer’s disease, known as a bapineuzumab jab, which is in the final phase of testing in more than 10,000 patients around the world, has been shown to prevent and, in some cases, reverse the buildup of amyloid protein, the substance that collects inside the brains of sufferers of several types of dementia.While the vaccine is not a cure, it is one of only two vaccines that have made it to the third and final stage of testing and holds promise for halting or reversing the effects of the disease.

Blue Cross Blue Shield is now covering the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine for males. The HPV vaccine is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for teenage boys and men up to age 26.

Celldex Therapeutics’ experimental vaccine for the most common type of brain cancer met the main goal of extending survival time for patients without a progression of the disease in a mid-stage trial. The vaccine rindopepimut, or CDX0110, is Celldex’s lead product candidate.

Scientists at Dartmouth University have discovered a new process of personalizing vaccines to help colorectal cancer patients develop immune responses to their own tumors. The dendritic cell vaccine was used after patients had undergone surgical resection and metastatic tumors in order to prevent the growth of additional metastases.

Three major medical centers are now using three new vaccines to target and kill cancer. In a three-year study of an experimental vaccine called Prostvac-vf, 30 percent of patients with non-small cell lung cancer who got the vaccine were alive, while only 17 percent of those who got a placebo survived that long. A second vaccine recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Provenge, improved three-year survival of prostate cancer patients by nearly 40 percent. And a breast cancer vaccine is in the works at Cleveland College. All of these vaccines work by revving up the immune system.

Gardasil, the vaccine to prevent cervical cancer in girls, has been approved by the FDA as a vaccine to prevent anal cancer, a rare but growing diagnosis in the United States. The approval opens the way for the medication’s maker, Merck and Co.Inc., to market the vaccine to boys and young men between the ages of 9 and 26.

Scientists in Dublin and Leicester have discovered how the body’s immune system responds to infection caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae that will pave the way for more effective vaccines to fight against pneumonia, meningitis and septicaemia. They discovered that the bacterial toxin pneumolysin triggers an immune response by activating a recently discovered group of proteins, called the NLRP3 inflammasome. Once activated, the inflammasome provides protection against infection caused by this pathogen.

Researchers from Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, N.Y., have created a safe vaccine that combines bits of the common cold virus with a particle that mimics cocaine to prevent cocaine molecules from reaching the brain of mice, preventing any cocainerelated activity. They hope that it will not only work to treat cocaine addiction, but also heroin and nicotine addiction.