News (Updated January 21,
2007)
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Fri Jan 19, 2007 11:50 PM ET
By David Douglas
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Most injection drug users in the US have undergone HIV testing, and expensive efforts to increase testing do not appear to be a worthwhile investment, investigators report in the American Journal of Public Health
The clearest implication of the study findings, lead researcher Dr. Robert Heimer told Reuters Health, "is that expanding testing as a means to prevent HIV transmissions among urban drug injectors in the US is not a sensible allocation of resources."
The conclusion is based on a study conducted by Heimer, of Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut, and colleagues, of 1543 injection drug users from five US cities.
Ninety-three percent had undergone HIV testing. Ninety percent of those who were told they were not HIV positive said that they had been tested within the previous 3 years.
Women were more likely to have been tested than men (95.5 versus 91.8 percent) and those in needle exchange programs were significantly more likely to have been tested than those who were not (96.1 versus 91.8 percent).
Using these data, the researchers estimate that the number of injection drug users in the US who have not undergone HIV testing is less than 40,000.
Heimer concluded that instead of being used for expanding HIV testing, "scarce prevention dollars should be spent on proven measures such as syringe exchange and substitution therapy for opiate addiction, as well as secondary prevention for HIV-positive injectors" that stresses entering and staying in drug rehab programs and adherence to HIV treatment.
SOURCE: American Journal of Public Health, January 2007.
RIO DE JANEIRO (AFP) - Brazilian researchers have developped an algae-based, microbe-killing gel for women aimed at blocking the sexual transmission of HIV.
The microbicide was 95 percent efficient in the first phase of testing over the last three years, the research's coordinator, immunologist Luiz Castello Branco, told Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper.
A second round of tests will start in February on mice and live cells from the cervix, said Branco, a researcher at the Oswaldo Cruz Institute in Rio de Janeiro. Human studies would start in 2008.
"We will certainly get to a final product with an efficiency above 50 percent," he said.
The gel -- based on a substance taken from Dictyota pfaffi, a type of algae found on the Brazilian coast -- could be put on the market in seven years, he said.
"A woman could use the gel without the husband knowing," Branco said.
"Right now we will test the product's safety and the ideal dose," said Branco, whose team is working with researchers from Fluminense Federal University and Ataulpho de Paiva Foundation.
Wednesday January 17, 1:37 pm ET
Several vaccine companies have drawn venture backing recently, including Juvaris BioTherapeutics, which in December raised $6 million of a planned $12 million first round from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers; Variation Biotechnologies Inc., which last week announced that it had raised a $35.7 million first round led by Clarus Ventures; and VaxInnate Corp., which drew $40 million in a third-round financing in October led by New Leaf Venture Partners.
The outbreak of pandemic flu, the threat of bioterrorism, and concern about seasonal influenza create opportunity for companies capable of rapidly producing protective vaccines. But, the field appeals for other reasons as well.
Improved understanding of immune-system function has led to creative strategies for provoking an immune response against viral and bacterial invaders. Animal and early human studies are usually excellent predictors of how a vaccine will fare in larger studies, and start-ups don't have to rely exclusively on venture dollars to fund their research -- the National Institutes of Health and various foundations offer grants and other types of non-dilutive financing.
Also, pharmaceutical companies are making a stronger push into vaccines. In November, for example, Pfizer Inc. acquired PowderMed Inc., a developer of vaccines for influenza, herpes, HIV and other indications, for an undisclosed amount of cash. SV Life Sciences, Oxford Bioscience Partners, Abingworth Management and others provided the Oxford, England, company with about $45 million in venture capital.
In vaccines, big drug makers see opportunity to enter a growing market and to counter the perception that they are preoccupied with lifestyle drugs and television ads.
"Vaccines are about as good a PR story as they can tell," says Gregory M. Weinhoff, a partner of CHL Medical Partners, which seeded VaxInnate in 2002.
In addition, some major drug makers are focusing on vaccines to help bridge the gap between older drugs facing increased generic competition and newer drugs yet to reach the market.
Several start-ups have technology enabling them to rapidly churn out vaccines to new strains of pathogenic viruses. Influenza, or flu, vaccines today are produced in egg-based manufacturing systems. Production of a seasonal flu vaccine takes several months.
But Alan Shaw, chief executive of VaxInnate, Cranbury, N.J., says his E. coli system for making vaccines is far more efficient -- yielding 50 million doses of its hemagglutinin vaccine for seasonal flu in two weeks, he says. That vaccine should enter the clinic in early 2008, Shaw says.
Another seasonal vaccine, which targets an antigen called M2 that doesn't change from year to year -- as the hemagglutinin antigen does -- is expected to enter clinical trials in April, according to Shaw.
Variation Biotechnologies, of Ottawa, says it can produce vaccines against a seasonal as well as pandemic influenza and many other pathogens. Before raising its first venture round, Variation funded its research with money from private investors and grants from the National Research Council of Canada's Industrial Research Assistance Program and other Canadian government agencies.
Juvaris, Pleasanton, Calif., recently tapped Kleiner Perkins' new pandemic and biodefense fund to raise its first-round capital. The company's vaccines are complexes of lipids and DNA. The capital will enable it to advance vaccines for influenza into clinical trials in the first quarter of 2008, according to Chief Executive Martin D. Cleary.
One company looking for venture funds is Vaxin Inc., a Birmingham, Ala., company that has raised $4.5 million from venture investors such as Emerging Technology Partners and corporations, including Crucell. The company is raising a $10 million Series B to fund a Phase I/II clinical trial of a seasonal flu vaccine that's delivered intranasally, according to Chief Executive Kent Van Kampen. It expects to put a vaccine for avian flu into Phase I this summer, Kampen says. Delivering vaccines intranasally is less painful than by injection. And since the nose is rich in cells that can trigger a powerful immune response to an antigen, intranasal vaccines may also be more potent than injected ones, he says.