Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1997. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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United Press International; Monday November 24, 1997 - 5:25 PM EST
Mara Bovsun in New York
The researchers are quickly developing a test vaccine for cancer, and hope to start experiments in humans late next year. They are also creating a vaccine against SIV, the kind of AIDS that strikes monkeys, and hope to test it in macaque monkeys in early 1998.
In a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the investigators say they created the vaccine by fusing a kind of molecule, known as a heat shock protein, taken from the tuberculosis germ with another protein called ovalbumin.
Immunologist Richard Young, of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, Cambridge, Mass., says the method could be used to develop vaccines for several kinds of cancer and infectious diseases.
Young, the lead author of the study, says, ``It is our very strong hope that we have a technology that may solve some of the problems in HIV and cancer vaccine development.''
The scientists injected the fused protein into mice, and found that it stimulated important cells of the animals' immune system, which Young calls cellular assassins, to attack ovalbumin. The immune system cells also attacked cancer cells that produced the protein.
In an experiment in which mice were injected with skin cancer cells, vaccinated animals fought off the cancer and survived, while those who did not get the vaccine died.
In the cancer treatment, Young is hoping to create a vaccine that can be used after surgery, to prevent the spread and recurrence of the disease. In AIDS, he hopes to find a vaccine that can prevent infection.
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