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Recent News and Articles on the Keywords: vaccine + breakthrough + technology  Related to the article below (Last Update: 8/5/2008)

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UQ research heralds vaccine technology breakthrough

Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection is a widespread infant illness that has been linked to asthma and can be deadly but may be curable by the development of this new vaccine technology by the Sir Albert Sakzewski Virus Research Centre and The University of Queensland's Faculty of Biological and Chemical Sciences.

Research centre director Professor Robert Tindle said RSV cost millions of dollars a year in health care in Australia and billions in the United States. It can lead to severe and lifethreatening lower respiratory tract infection or bronchiolitis.

About one in 1000 die from the illness. However, the vaccine that is being developed is expected to treat the illness in infected people as well as prevent against it.

Those most at risk from RSV are children aged two and under, especially those with weak respiratory symptoms, elderly people and the immunocompromised, such as people with HIV or those who have weakened immune systems due to treatments such as chemotherapy.

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"Benefits of the vaccine will include a huge saving in health care costs," Professor Tindle said.

"(It will also) relieve the burden of worry on thousands of parents who every year go through all kinds of angst because their young children are going into hospital with very worrying symptoms and it would prevent the death of the children who succumb to it and die."

With preclinical modelling in mice having been encouraging, Professor Tindle said clinical trials were forthcoming, leading the way to the vaccine becoming available in the clinic. He hoped it would become one of the vaccines given to all infants in their first three months of life.

The mature paediatric market for an RSV vaccine has been estimated at approximately US$800 million (LeadDiscovery Ltd, 2004).

Professor Tindle said the importance of the research project was double-barrelled because, along with helping children, it included forming a new type of vaccine. The research group has developed a "recombinant" vaccine using the existing Hepatitis B vaccine to carry the RSV peptides.

"Hepatitis B surface antigen forms virus-like particles, which are the vaccine used for Hepatitis B vaccine all around the world," Professor Tindle said.

"We're taking advantage of that to piggyback, if you like, the respiratory syncytial virus peptides into the vaccine."

He hoped the vaccine would ultimately be able to protect people against both diseases in the one shot and, even better, the recombinant vaccine model could potentially be used for most infectious diseases and some cancers, Professor Tindle said.

Playing a key role in the research group is international expert on recombinant vaccines, Dr Scott Thomson. Professor Tindle said gaining Dr Thomson's expertise was a coup for the project.

"If anyone's going to get the (vaccine) it's going to be Scott," Professor Tindle said.

Working with UniQuest Pty Ltd, Professor Tindle has received funding from UniSeed Pty Ltd and the Symbiosis Group Ltd, building on $200,000 through Smart State Golden Casket and approximately $400,000 from National Health and Medical Research Council.

'Upgrading' from Secondary to Primary Seatbelt Laws Would Save Lives, Researchers Find


COLUMBIA, Mo. - Vehicle crashes claim approximately 42,000 lives each year, according to statistics from the U.S. Department of Transportation. Recently, Missouri and other states have been considering a law that would encourage seatbelt use. Research conducted by a University of Missouri-Columbia professor sheds new light on the importance of seatbelts and laws that encourage their use.

Lilliard Richardson, associate professor in MU's Truman School of Public Affairs, and David J. Houston, associate professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, conducted two studies of primary seatbelt enforcement, and both demonstrate the effectiveness of such laws in saving lives. Primary enforcement laws allow law enforcement officers to pull over drivers and ticket them if they are not wearing their seatbelts. Secondary enforcement laws, on the other hand, only allow an officer to pull over drivers for a separate violation (speeding, headlight out, etc.) and then ticket them if they are not wearing their seatbelts. Twenty-four states have primary enforcement laws, whereas others, including Missouri, only have secondary enforcement laws. New Hampshire has no seatbelt law. A bill to change enforcement from secondary to primary recently passed in the Missouri House and Senate.

In the study "Safety Belt Use and the Switch to Primary Enforcement," Richardson and Houston developed statistical models of observed seatbelt use in 47 states and the District of Columbia from 1991 to 2003. They found that states could increase belt use by 10 percent and improve public safety considerably by upgrading to primary enforcement.

"Seatbelts save lives, and stronger seatbelt laws increase seatbelt use," Richardson said. "Many studies have examined the effects of primary and secondary enforcement laws, but our study is one of only a few to look at the gains that can be made by upgrading from a secondary to a primary law. Our results show that seatbelt use increased when states upgraded to primary enforcement laws, and this means that upgrading can save lives."

Thirteen of the 47 states studied changed their laws from secondary to primary between 1991 and 2003. Richardson and Houston found that seatbelt use in all of the states studied increased during the 13-year study, but states with primary enforcement laws consistently had the highest use of seatbelts, and states with only secondary enforcement laws had the lowest usage rates. States that started the study with secondary enforcement laws and then upgraded to primary enforcement laws experienced the greatest average increase in belt use. States that had primary enforcement laws throughout the study saw seatbelt use increase from 68.4 to 86.1 percent, whereas states that upgraded saw an increase from 55.5 to 82.7 percent.

Another study done by Richardson and Houston, "Reducing Traffic Fatalities in American States by Upgrading Seat Belt Use Laws to Primary Enforcement," showed a strong link not just between primary enforcement laws and seatbelt use, but between primary enforcement laws and a reduction in fatalities. The study found that fatality rates in states with secondary enforcement laws remained stable between 1990 and 2002, whereas fatality rates in states with primary enforcement laws continued to steadily decline. Even with statistical controls for demographic changes in the states over time, primary enforcement states showed nearly double the reduction in fatalities compared to secondary states. Further, an upgrade to primary enforcement was associated with a 5.1 percent decline in fatalities for drivers and a 4.7 percent decrease in all vehicle occupant fatalities. The study estimated that the ten states and District of Columbia that upgraded from secondary to primary enforcement laws saved 3,553 lives between 1993 and 2002.

"Safety Belt Use and the Switch to Primary Enforcement" was published in the American Journal of Public Health in November 2006, and "Reducing Traffic Fatalities in the American states by Upgrading Seatbelt Use Laws to Primary Enforcement" was published in the Journal of Public Analysis and Management in June 2006.

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