Crucial Hep C vaccine stalled due to lack of funding

Lucie van den Berg medical reporter

From: Herald Sun

October 08, 2013 12:01AM

Money is needed to fund a crucial Hep C vaccine that could save lives. Source: ThinkStock

A GAME-CHANGING vaccine that could help eradicate a debilitating virus plaguing almost 150 million people worldwide has stalled over a funding shortfall.

Melbourne scientists have successfully tested the hepatitis C vaccine in animal models, but it cannot progress to human trials until it secures funding.

Hep C is the leading cause of liver disease and puts an incredible strain on the health system.

But the Burnet Institute vaccine, which could prevent the virus, is stuck in the medical research "valley of death".

Associate Professor Heidi Drummer said it had developed a preventive vaccine that - together with new direct acting antiviral agents - could eradicate the virus.

Hep C has been a difficult virus to tackle with a single vaccine because of its clever ability to change its structure and evade our immune response.

"Hep C is classed into 7 different genotypes and 100 different sub types, which means it has been a really big challenge to try and make a vaccine that will protect against all circulating strains," Prof Drummer said.

Her team at the Viral Fusion Laboratory discovered that even though the virus protein, which the antibodies have to stop infiltrating the cells, was highly variable, it still had consistent characteristics across the strains.

They designed a vaccine containing a protein with only those consistent components.

In mice and guinea pigs injected with the vaccine, they found the body produced antibodies that were able to tackle the consistent components across all virus strains, stopping the infection.

She said it was a real step forward, but the crucial test was replicating the result in humans.

The Burnet Institute has been unable to secure funding to carry out phase 1 clinical trials.

Commercial development and industry engagement manager Serina Cucuzza said it was difficult to attract funding for the crucial proof of concept stage, known as the valley of death.

"We have passed the initial valley of death by highlighting that we have a vaccine that is a potential game-changer," she said.

"It's now in the second valley of death where we need to trial it in humans, which is an expensive exercise."

She said vaccines were traditionally the best low cost, high value intervention, but they were struggling to attract Government or investor funding to progress the project.

The majority of Australia's 11,000 new hep C cases each year are caused by injecting drugs, but in the developing world infections are mostly due to unsterilised medical equipment.

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