In an an} exciting piece of news from the battle against herpes, one of the world’s leading research corporations recently announced that it {could} be closing in on producing a vaccine for the HSV-2 virus that causes the sexually-transmitted disease. U.S. medical firm Agenus Inc. released conclusions from its ongoing research study last month indicating that its developmental drug, HerpV, effectively stopped the presence of genital herpes symptoms in men and women who took part. Even more impressively, the pharmaceutical also appeared to inhibit the virus’ capacity to infect another host.
So How Does HerpV Work?
Without diving} too deeply} into complex biology, HerpV works by stimulating} an immune system reaction that improves cells’ capacity to recognize the herpes virus. This is achieved by releasing what is {known as} a “heat shock protein”, or HSP, into the bloodstream. As soon as it’s in the human body, the HSP binds itself onto the surface of healthy blood cells, consequently leading infected cells to become incompatible and incapable of attaching themselves (i.e., duplicate).
By blocking the genital herpes virus from duplicating, HerpV effectively renders it incapable of {causing~unable to induce} outbreaks in current sufferers and non-transmittable to herpes-negative people. This is undoubtedly an amazing idea} for the approximated 16% of the population now afflicted with genital herpes.
How Significant Were Agenus’ Discoveries?
In what what} was termed as a Phase 1 study, 100% of herpes-positive subjects who were administered a HerpV injection demonstrated a major elevation in antigen-targeted cell immune system reaction to the virus. In common lingo, this indicates that the T cells in every one of the study’s participants developed immunity to HSV-2 immediately after being exposed to the HSP.
Dr. David Koelle, a medical professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine, offered the conclusions on behalf of Agenus and made the ensuing statement, “I believe these data represent the first finding of their kind in humans in genital herpes treatments.” The physician continued on to say, “The potential use for a therapeutic vaccine candidate such as HerpV is in managing outbreaks and ultimately disease transmission in patients with genital herpes.”
Might This} Suggest That A Vaccine Is On The Horizon?
The implications of these early results on HerpV are immense. Dr. Koelle reinforced} this point thusly}, “Being able to impact and possibly decrease the spread of genital herpes would be a huge step in stemming this epidemic that affects one in six adults in the U.S.” With all of the excitement that this announcement generated, a logical question was “So, how close is the HerpV vaccine to being released to the public?”
Even though it may not be very far away, it is extremely unlikely that the vaccine will be made available to present genital herpes patients anytime in the near future. Agenus is just now beginning Phase 2 of its research on the pharmaceutical’s effectiveness and, if it proves successful, would then need to enter the FDA-approval program before releasing the vaccine. As this process can often take years, the effort to eradicate herpes symptoms in men and women may not be as near to its end as all of us would like to believe.
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