NeuroVax launches trial of MS vaccine

CARLSBAD, Calif., Oct. 10 (UPI) -- U.S. firm Immune Response Corp. said Tuesday it has secured a contractor for its phase 2 trial of NeuroVax, a vaccine for multiple sclerosis.

The company said it has contracted with Accelsiors CRO & Consultancy Services to oversee the study.

IRC said it would start enrolling patients in the study by the end of the year, eventually recruiting 200 subjects with relapsing-remitting MS.

The study will be powered to compare the cumulative number of new gadolinium enhancing brain lesions -- a key marker of the disease -- via manetic resonance imaging scans at 24, 32, 40, and 48 weeks.

"We are extremely excited at the potential of NeuroVax(TM) to help patients with Multiple Sclerosis," said Krzysztof Selmaj, the study's lead investigator. "This treatment may have the ability to alter how the immune system fights MS and we eagerly anticipate study results that could offer benefit to the millions of MS patients in need of more effective and tolerable treatment options."

NeuroVax is a T-cell receptor (TCR) peptide vaccine.

According to IRC, MS affects about 400,000 people in the United States and roughly 2.5 million people worldwide.

http://www.upi.com/HealthBusiness/vi...0-114335-3189r

Wannabe,

Normally, when a pharma develops a vaccine to fight a disease, it knows what causes the disease and creates a drug which allows your system to produce anti-bodies against it.

Today, nobody knows what causes MS or even if it's an auto-immune disease. Certain discoveries in the past couple of years have thrown a lot of doubt on the auto-immune theory as well.

So I ask the question....how is someone going to get a vaccine to work on a disease that has no known cause? Or is this new T-cell peptide just another drug to alter the immune system in MS patients in the hope of trying yet another medication.

Harry

Good points, Harry. It's kinda' like putting the cart before the horse...

A number of the drugs we use right now (and vaccines used for other purposes), were stumbled upon, based on a hypothesis. (Admittingly, many of the drugs are not doing a LOT to help many of us, but they are working for some.)

I wouldn't want to be a trial like this, but I am certainly glad there are people out there who are willing to. I wouldn't mind being in the Tovaxin trial though; I have high hopes for that treatment.

Cherier

Hi Harry,

I think this is another of the vaccines programmed to inhibit certain autoreactive T cells from functioning against MBP. This isn't a vaccine against a foreign target, it works to limit T-cells that act against myelin. It won't be a vaccine that everyone takes to avoid MS like most vaccines do, it will be given to people with MS to eliminate the bad T-cells.

The results of all of the vaccine programs have been extremely positive, as lady express pointed out. MSer's have a much higher proportion of certain T-cells known to react to MBP. So broadening the net of which T-cells are inhibited or eliminated by a vaccine will protect even further the immune response against myelin. The fact that they're tailored to each specific patient using their own blood is good too.

I'm excited about this kind of research, and the early trials seem to show continued positive effect for those that have been enrolled in these vaccine trials for many years now. They seem to have stabilized their disease.

Hi Wannabe,

So what we have is yet another drug that will possibly prevent certain T-cells from going against the myelin in the hope of slowing down the disease. I suppose that may provide some limited "slow down" of the disease but we still aren't any further ahead in getting to the root cause of MS, whatever that may be. And we all know the associated risks involved when T-cells aren't allowed to do their normal function. I see another possible money making drug for big pharma but not much else in really finding the answer to MS.

Take care.

Harry

Me too, Cherie...Tovaxin sounds like a winner.

I see your point Harry, but theses are the T-cells that lead to the attack of the myelin, so are considered bad T-cells.

I don't know about this drug, but with Tovaxin, these T-cells are isolated and distroyed. The other good T-cells are left alone to do their jobs.

There you have it. Science 101..

http://www.pharmafrontierscorp.com/toxavin.php

Here is an animation and some explanation of how tovaxin works. I wish this tiral was going on in Canada-looks very promising, but seems to be targeted at very early rrms.