WHV scientists will conduct a study to better characterize the immune responses observed in volunteers in the HVTN 124 clinical study testing its PDPHV vaccine candidate.
With the completion of immunizations in all volunteers in the ongoing HVTN 124 Phase I clinical study, HIV Vaccine Trials Network recently advanced to assessing the peak immune responses observed two weeks after the last immunization. At the same time, WHV plans to supplement HVTN’s work by conducting its own investigation into the dynamics of immune responses, as well as conducting additional assay to better assess the breadth and potency of antibodies elicited by the PDPHV vaccine candidate. This proposal has been met positively by HVTN, who agreed to share the necessary samples from the HVTN124 study volunteers.
This work will be conducted in collaboration with Dr. Sha Lu’s Laboratory of Nucleic Acid Vaccines (LNAV) at the UMMS in Worcester, MA. Dr. Lu is the co-inventor of the PDPHV vaccine candidate and his laboratory has extensive expertise in assessing immune responses to the DNA/protein vaccines. Another co-inventor, Dr. Shixia Wang, will lead the studies.
In preparation for this work, LNAV recently obtained an approval for this project from UMMS’ Institutional Review Board (IRB) and is currently working with HVTN to identify and transfer the required samples for the study. The results from the study will be available later this year.
