Chronic infectious diseases, such as tuberculosis, AIDS or hepatitis, cause millions of deaths and new infections each year worldwide. What similarities exist between these diseases? Could a vaccine be developed for all of them?
Immunotherapy consists of stimulating the patient's own defenses to fight the disease. In oncology, immunotherapy has been tested in mice using a nonspecific vaccine that activates the immune system to fight the tumor.
The project, led by the teams of Dr. Christian Brander and Dr. Andreas Meyerhans, and which has financial support from the CaixaResearch Call for Health Research, is working to apply immunotherapy methods using a non-specific vaccine for diseases chronic infectious diseases, such as the AIDS virus and hepatitis B and C, which, except in the latter case, do not have a curative treatment. These pathologies are also characterized by the loss of functionality of T cells, an important type of defense against the pathogen that, by losing its antiviral capacity, allows the infectious agent to grow uncontrollably.
The objective is to design a universal therapeutic vaccine that can combine the cure of several chronic viral infections. Now, these patients require medication throughout their lives, with a type of treatment that has adverse effects on their health and a high economic cost for health systems. Therefore, a universal therapeutic vaccine could help address this global challenge.
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