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Acambis initiates pre-clinical testing with herpes vaccine from Harvard Medical School

27 Feb 2008 - Acambis plc announced that it has initiated pre-clinical trials with a herpes vaccine, licensed from Harvard University through its Office of Technology Development, with a view to submitting an Investigational New Drug (IND) application in 2009.
 
The dl5-29 HSV-2 vaccine was developed by a Harvard Medical School team led by Dr David M. Knipe, Higgins Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics and Chair, Harvard Virology Program. The vaccine is an HSV-2 strain from which two genes have been deleted, making the virus incapable of replication or of establishing latent infection. Acambis holds an exclusive worldwide licence under Harvard's patent rights to manufacture and sell the vaccine.
 
Pre-clinical studies with dl5-29 conducted by Dr Knipe's team at Harvard Medical School have previously shown that the replication defective vaccine induces strong HSV-2-specific antibody and T-cell responses; can protect against challenge with a wild-type HSV-2 virus; greatly reduces the severity of recurrent disease; provides cross-protection against HSV-1; and is unable to revert to a virulent state or to become latent.