NEW YORK, July 30 (Reuters) - Merck & Co. Inc. <MRK.N> scientists are making plans to begin the first
human tests of
two promising experimental vaccines for use against AIDS developed as part of an intense top-secret research
effort, the
Wall Street Journal reported in its Friday editions.
The report said the company's top vaccine-research executive confirmed the vaccines' existence and the
company's plans to
begin administering them in a small number of healthy, uninfected volunteers by year's end.
The executive, Emilio Emini, told the WSJ the human tests will be undertaken to help Merck scientists
determine if the
vaccines can produce in people the kind of immune-system reaction generated in animal studies.
Merck declined to provide much detail about the AIDS vaccines, the WSJ reported.
Several other companies are testing prototype vaccines in large and small trials in the U.S. and abroad. But
one of the Merck
vaccines will be among the first of a class of so-called "naked DNA" vaccines for HIV to go into humans, the
WSJ reported.
Merck licenses the technology of the "naked DNA" from Vical Inc. <VICL.O>, a San Diego, Calif.-based
company which
owns the patent to the technology.
"Naked DNA" is potentially revoluntionary because it stimulates both arms of the immune system, antibodies
and T-cells,
which are immune cells made by the thymus gland.
Traditional vaccines only stimulate antibodies |
