>> "has not worked" <<
That, to my knowledge, is yet to be determined.
>> It is true, isn't it, that Remune has been tested by itself as a vaccine candidate and has not worked? <<
The question relevant to this thread is "will it work with HAART?"
If you go through past posts to the thread, you will find my opinions regarding the vaccine. This isn't the place for a text on vaccine strategies. Let's just say that, for prophylaxis, you characteristically want antigens that evoke a protective serologic (antibody) response. Remune ain't got them. For therapy, no vaccine has ever been shown to be effective for intervention in a human viral disease. Every once in awhile you'll find a company that does a "Cytel", and will bring you preliminary or anecdotal evidence that it will work (in Cytel's case, it was HBV), but those stories seem to quietly go away. So, most immunologists that I know did not have much respect for Remune.
And, therefore, IMNR was my all-time most successful short (many years ago).
The question is, given the new nature of the HIV beast, is there a way to defeat the creature using active vaccination? The rationale that T cells can produce molecules that competitively inhibit the binding of virus to the CD4+ cell is not nonsense. We now know that the primary receptors for HIV on the human T cell are also the receptors for products of activated T cells themselves; HIV is a new creature. I hope that IMNR and AGPH have patients doing the polka that would otherwise be sick and that my pessimism is misplaced. Further, I'm very pleased that the experiments are being done...... the preliminary results are quite promising.
The phenomenon of antigenic competition is real. It is very possible that gp120 would make the vaccine less effective, diverting most of the capacities of the "immune system" to antigens which are almost certainly irrelevant for active disease.
So.... it's an open story, in active disease and with HAART. What happens if you beat the virus off with PIs and nucs, and then tickle a cell population that can give you the upper hand? For your question (no HAART), I'm not optimistic.
Remune is just one of the projects that Johnson et al. are trying to use for leverage. He's hanging out on a Viracept limb (nice, strong limb), holding a watering can. |
