Recombinant Protein Immunizes Mice, Promises New Strategy Against Infection ...( Solving a long-standing problem in vacc...)

Solving a long-standing problem in vaccine development, scientists have crafted a new way to deliver foreign proteins into the body such that the immune system is primed to attack virus-infected cells and cancer cells. Because this kind of an immune response is key to vaccine development, the findings have profound implications for developing safe vaccines to immunize against AIDS and other infectious diseases, and for creating new cancer therapies. Results from the study, led by Dr. Richard Young, Member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, will be published in the November 25 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In the study, scientists created a new, recombinant protein by fusing together a special type of protein called a 'heat shock protein,' isolated from the tuberculosis bacterium, and a protein called ovalbumin, long used by immunologists to study immune function. When scientists injected the recombinant protein into mice, the animals mounted an immune response against ovalbumin and developed immunity against cancer cells that make ovalbumin. These ovalbumin-producing cancer cells normally kill unimmunized mice.

"These results have led us to use the same heat shock fusion technology to develop vaccine candidates against AIDS and other infectious diseases," says Dr. Young, who now leads a consortium of scientists from Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to develop a vaccine against AIDS. Dr. Young and his colleagues are creating a recombinant monkey vaccine consisting of the heat shock protein fused to a protein from the Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (SIV). Researchers plan to test the efficacy of this vaccine in macaques.

When germs enter the body, the immune system responds in two ways. One arm of the immune system, led by immune cells called B cells, works mainly by secreting antibodies into the body's fluids. These antibodies seek and destr
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Contact: Seema Kumar or Eve Nichols
kumar@wi.mit.edu, nichols@wi.mit.edu
(617) 258-5183
Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research
25-Nov-1997

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