Luvei Times Kenya's Social Online Magazine

A promising results for HIV Vaccine in a new study

GAITHERSBURG, MD – VIRxSYS Corporation, a privately held company developing vaccines and RNA therapies for serious human diseases such as HIV and cardiovascular diseases, announced results from its prophylactic HIV vaccine (VRX1023) study in Rhesus Macaque monkeys during a presentation at the 2010 Annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) in San Francisco, CA.

The study has demonstrated that the vaccine, is capable of achieving significant control
of viral load over the course of four months following a challenge with a highly pathogenic
simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), a virus found in non-human primates and similar to HIV.

In addition, monkeys vaccinated with VRX1023 demonstrated an improved immune response.
VIRxSYS is currently preparing an Investigational New Drug Application for the therapeutic use
of their HIV vaccine candidate in HIV infected patients. “We are extremely encouraged by the results of this study. The combination of strong immune responses, viral control, and CD4 preservation is tremendous. In addition, contrary to most viral vectors currently in development, our lentiviral vector elicits nominal anti-vector responses and therefore can be successfully re-administered,” said Dr. Franck Lemiale, Ph.D., Director of Immunology for VIRxSYS. “It will be very interesting to see how it performs as a therapeutic vaccine in humans.”

VIRxSYS’ vaccine candidate differs from other HIV vaccine candidates in that it employs an
engineered HIV-based lentiviral vector to deliver the vaccinating antigens. The study results
demonstrate the VIRxSYS vaccine candidate achieves remarkably high levels of T-cell
responses, resulting in a 95% reduction of viral load in Rhesus monkeys which received
lentiviral vaccination, as compared to non-vaccinated control animals in this study.

No adverse reactions have been observed in any of the vaccinated animals following multiple infusions of the lentiviral vaccine.

The potential impact of a series of simple injections to treat patients who are currently taking complex and often toxic multi-drug regimens, particularly in the developing world, is enormous. VRX1023 is designed to work against all clades of HIV.