Terror behind push for better vaccine
TERRORISM THREAT FUELS PUSH FOR TREATMENT WITH FEWER SIDE-EFFECTS
Even though smallpox was eradicated 37 years ago, a Canadian researcher has just unveiled what promises to be a better, safer version of the 221-year-old smallpox vaccine. The reason? Bioterrorism. If the approval process goes as planned, the Canadian creation would be used to top up vaccine stockpiles around the world just in case the likes of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant or al-Qaida find a way to unleash a 21st century smallpox pandemic.
Derived from horsepox, a horse skin disease, researchers believe that it avoids the side-effects associated with the vaccine that was originally used to eradicate smallpox.
“Generally, they’re considered vaccines that you wouldn’t want to hand out willy-nilly, you’d only use them in case of an emergency,” said the University of Alberta’s David Evans, whose laboratory specializes in pox viruses.
“We believe that horsepox offers an alternative.”
Owned by U.S.-based Tonix Pharmaceuticals, the vaccine, known as HPXV, is now entering the early stages of testing and trials.
Currently, the World Health Organization maintains large stockpiles of vaccinia, the mild virus normally used to insulate the body against smallpox.
While effective, the vaccine is known for its sideeffects. When thousands of U.S. civil servants were inoculated against smallpox in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, for instance, a handful reported chest pains and heart pain as a result.
Smallpox was the world’s first disease to receive a successful vaccine. In 1796, the English physician Edward Jenner began intentionally infecting patients with what was believed to be cowpox, a mild skin disease that nevertheless inoculated the body against smallpox infection.
The treatment even became the source of the word “vaccine”; vacca is Latin for “cow.”
Horsepox seems to have gone naturally extinct in the 1980s. However, a sample of horsepox was captured and gene sequenced by the U.S. government — allowing Evans and his team to rebuild the virus from scratch.
Evans believes that his creation is close to the original 1796 vaccine discovered by Edward Jenner.
In the early days of smallpox inoculation, the vaccine was passed by the rather disgusting method of cutting one’s arm and mushing the wound into the cowpox sores of a friend.
When immunologists were taking the vaccine overseas, rather than hauling cargoes of glass bottles, they would simply load up a ship with infected orphans.
After two centuries of incubating in human bodies, the result is that the smallpox vaccine mutated over time, likely developing the side-effects that now make it such a hazard.
In the days before centralized manufacture of the vaccine, smallpox vaccine was like Coca-Cola; every city had a slightly different version of the original.
In fact, Evans came across HPXV through a forensic analysis of these various mutant smallpox vaccines.
By comparing different versions, he discovered that horsepox seemed to be their common ancestor.
Testing a smallpox vaccine is no easy thing. There is nobody with smallpox anymore, so a standard clinical trial is out of the question.
Instead, researchers will likely administer the vaccine to animal and human test subjects, and then perform laboratory analysis of whether HPXV is generating the same bodily response as existing vaccines.
WE BELIEVE THAT HORSEPOX OFFERS AN ALTERNATIVE.