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Cancer vaccine has strong response in girls
(Reuters)
Updated: 2005-12-18 10:39
NEW YORK - Girls aged 10 to 14 who received GlaxoSmithKline Plc's
vaccine to prevent infection with the virus that causes cervical cancer had
immune responses twice as strong as women 15-25 years old given the vaccine, the
company said on Saturday, describing results of a late-stage trial.
Glaxo said the first published data from a Phase III trial of its Cervarix
vaccine suggest it may provide the strongest and most-prolonged protection if
given to girls at very young ages, long before they encounter the sexually
transmitted virus.
"The concentrations of antibodies to the virus were twice as high in the
bloodstreams of the young girls," said Gary Dubin, a senior research official at
Glaxo who was the lead author on the study.
Antibodies are immune-system proteins that seek out and destroy bacteria and
viruses. Vaccines, by introducing the body to snippets of specific bacteria or
viruses, train the body to crank out tailor-made antibodies that attack them.
Dubin said the trial was not designed to confirm actual effectiveness of the
vaccine because few girls in the 10 to 14 age group are yet sexually active.
Instead, he said the immune response is the best "surrogate" indicator of the
vaccine's potential ability to protect them from prolonged infection with the
virus.
Results of the trial were presented at the Interscience Conference on
Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (ICAAC) in Washington, D.C.
The Glaxo-financed trial, conducted in Europe and Russia, involved 158
healthy girls aged 10-14 and 458 women aged 15-25 who received three doses of
the vaccine over a six month period.
Cervarix, which has not yet been submitted for regulatory approvals, is one
of the most important experimental products being developed by the British
drugmaker. It is expected to eventually compete with a similar Merck and Co.
vaccine, Gardasil, that is already awaiting approval from U.S. and European
regulators.
Like Gardasil, the Glaxo product blocks infection with two strains of human
papillomavirus that are responsible for about 70 percent of cases of cervical
cancer. It is the second most common fatal cancer in women.
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