October 15, 2015 – Immune Response

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Anchor lead:  A new vaccine for HPV produces a big immune response, Elizabeth Tracey reports

A vaccine administered along with a small electrical shock was able to induce a robust response to human papilloma virus, or HPV, in women with precancerous lesions of the cervix caused by the virus.  That’s according to a study by Cornelia Trimble, an HPV expert at Johns Hopkins, and colleagues.

Trimble: We saw really big immune responses to HPV in these patients. We saw T cell responses which is the kind of immune response you want to kill something, We also saw antibody responses which are pretty exciting. The short version is we cured almost half the patients with the vaccine. By cured I mean that by the end of the trial their cervical dysplasia had gone away.  In the vaccinated patients most of the time their cervixes went to normal.   :28

Trimble says most women did not identify the shock as objectionable, and those who responded to the vaccine also had no detectable virus in cervical samples.  She is hopeful that such an approach will allow the majority of women to also avoid recurrence.  At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.