A successful vaccine for RNA viruses like HIV and hepatitis C (HCV) will require cell mediated immunity (CMI) as well as neutralising antibody. The vaccine delivery vehicles which are currently in use to generate CMI are not effective because individuals have pre-existing immunity to the delivery vehicle or generate immunity to the vehicle in a multiple dose regimen. This project is designed to overcome this limitation by using multiple vaccine delivery vehicles which encode common HCV proteins.
It is possible to cure some patients with HCV infection but the current therapy is very costly and produces numerous side effects in treated individuals. We propose to treat patients using a new therapy in which HCV proteins are first expressed in blood cells ex vivo and the cells then manipulated to generate dying cells. These will be injected into the same patient from which they were collected initially and are expected to elicit high levels of HCV immunity with the potential for cure.
A successful vaccine prevents infection. For HIV infection all candidate vaccines thus far have failed. From the many HIV-1 infected individuals there are a very small percentage that do not progress to disease. For these infected subjects we hypothesise that their immune responses are much better preserved and hence they will have stronger antibody responses. We have geared up our laboratory to characterise these strong antibodies and use them in making a better HIV-1 vaccine.