Mimic
Peptides of Human T Cell Epitopes as HIV Vaccines
Dr. June Kan-Mitchell has been working to develop vaccines to treat or prevent HIV infection. Although effective anti-HIV drugs have become available in recent years and the use of combinations of these has resulted in improvements in quality of life and life expectancy, this approach has not been successful at eradicating the virus. Eventually, all patients progress to AIDS and ultimately death. These drugs are also very expensive and beyond the means of developing countries. “With HIV making new fronts in Africa and Asia, it is imperative to develop a simple and cost effective vaccine as quickly as possible,” said Dr. Kan-Mitchell. Dr.
Kan-Mitchell and her research team are focusing their research efforts
on elucidating the antiviral T cell-mediated immunity, which is pivotal
for controlling the HIV infection. Using a new technology provided by
her collaborators, Drs. Darcy Wilson and Sylvie Blondelle at Mixture
Sciences, Inc., they hope to identify new epitopes, or small pieces of
proteins recognized by T cells, that are more effective than the natural
viral proteins in generating an effective anti-HIV immune response.
Patents granted on this project will become the basis for a start-up
company that could be in business within three years. “We
hope to isolate the T cells that are reacting to different isotopes and
then screen the library to find new epitopes that mimic the natural ones
but are more potent. After identifying these new epitopes, it is fairly
easy to use this information to construct new ‘designer’
vaccines,” she said. “The development of HIV vaccines have major
sociological and commercial impact.” The
advantage to this approach, as opposed to the whole viral protein
approach, is that epitope vaccines are very safe. A small portion of the
viral protein is used, but not the complete protein, eliminating the
risk for cancer, cell death and other unwanted side effects. “The
goal of the vaccine is to enable immunized people to mobilize huge
numbers of T cells with different specificities upon being exposed to
the virus. Our hope is that this will immediately remove most or all of
the infection, before the HIV can become an established infection. We
want the T cells to smash the virus the very first time they see it,”
said Dr. Kan-Mitchell. |
