Chimp Viruses for Human Vaccines

Scientists originally wanted to use human cold viruses -adenoviruses- to deliver the Hepatitis C vaccine in the body. Problem is, most people have antibodies that kill off the adenovirus 'vehicle,' so it doesn't work. The current brilliant idea is to use chimp viruses harvested from the little beasties poop.

Chimp Viruses for Human Vaccines

An adenovirus isolated from chimpanzee feces proves more effective than human adenoviruses as a vaccine vector for hepatitis C.

Human adenoviruses have been proposed as vectors for antigens in vaccines because of their ability to induce strong immune responses in animal models. But there is one major problem—patients that have already been exposed to such adenoviruses naturally develop antibodies against them, which then neutralize the vaccine before it has a chance to deliver its package.

“The body has mounted an immune response, which stays for the rest of its life,” explained Alfredo Nicosia of Okairos in Rome, Italy.

Now, Nicosia and his colleagues believe they have found a solution—use chimpanzee adenoviruses instead.

I have a lot of problems with this. First, I think the whole vaccine concept is seriously flawed. Second and most important, the world is seeing multiple new diseases jumping between animals and humans, crossing species barriers like crazy - and even crossing kingdom barriers.

Did these guys learn nothing from HIV?

Just because you can doesn't mean you should.

As long as it's done in a safe way and it benefit's us in the long run I see no problem tbh.
Also less calling them beastie's they are more like you and me then any other animal on the planet. We are evolutionary brothers.

Yes we are all evolutionary brothers...but our species is just a higher (??) level of beastie. If we judged our position in the world of beasties by the complexity of the chromosones, then the dog would be above both the chimp and us.

Back to the topic...now I question how they develop the vectors for many vaccines; I would think that only ONE adeno-virus vaccine carrier could be used per individual; as the immune response for the first exposure would damage the effectiveness of the subsequent exposures.

How many virus vectors for vaccines are available? (say that real fast several times...) Say, for example the new hep C vaccine uses the chimp adenovirus vector. And another vaccine is developed using the same vector - could it be used later??

reply to post by lakesidepark


So you're not at all concerned about zoonoses?

2011 Convention News .... attendees agreed on one thing —there are going to be more emerging zoonoses in the future

Emerging zoonoses

Emerging zoonotic diseases have potentially serious human health and economic impacts and their current upwards trends are likely to continue.

Examples are avian influenza, Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis (BSE) and the Nipah virus. Some of the "lingering" zoonoses are re-emerging in some regions, although they seem to attract less public awareness. Brucellosis, dog rabies and parasitic diseases such as cysticercosis/taeniasis and echinococcosis/hydatidosis for example.

Many factors lead to the emergence of zoonotic diseases. Environmental changes, human and animal demography, pathogen changes and changes in farming practice are a few of them.

2004: Emerging zoonoses on the rise

Concern over the growing list of new and emerging zoonotic diseases—avian influenza, West Nile, monkeypox, and Nipah—drew experts on veterinary medicine, public health, ecology, conservation, microbiology, and disease modeling and forecasting from around the world to the World Health Organization headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. They met May 3-5 to identify the factors causing diseases to jump from animals to human, and to improve systems for monitoring and controlling zoonoses.