Due to the courage and dedication of our entire staff, including the Director of Vilab, Betsy Brotman, Vilab staff continued to work throughout the war, except for the 4 week period when severe fighting took place in and around the lab. Most moved to the laboratory compound to protect it against looting. As a result of the dedication of the staff, research continued throughout the war. Aside from the tragic loss of chimps described above, the major effect of the war was to deprive us of funding, as understandably foundations, NIH, and industry considered research in Liberia too risky to support. Since the end of the war this situation has fortunately changed.

Major research accomplishments during and since the war are as follows:

1. Immunity after natural HCV infection has been found to be weak or nonexistent despite the development of antibody and cell mediated immunity. This is in part due to selection of minor quasispecies in the inoculum against which there is little or no immunity

2. Attempts to achieve prophylactic immunization, or immunotherapy, of HCV using DNA based immunization, failed despite induction of antibody and cell mediated immunity. We have concluded that we need to learn how to induce much stronger immunity, the focus of our current research.

3. DNA based immunization against HBV was successful in protecting against a live virus challenge, even when given to new born chimpanzees when these were challenged 6 months later, but not when animals were simultaneously challenged at birth. We conclude that the immunization regimen must be strengthened to induce antibody and cell mediated immunity more rapidly.

4. Solvent/detergent inactivation was demonstrated to inactivate hepatitis delta virus.

5. Chimpanzees were shown, for the first time, to be susceptible to infection and papilloma formation with human papilloma virus (type 16). This provides a model for vaccine evaluation for this important human oncogenic virus.

6. An experiment on the immunotherapy of chronic HBV infection proved surprisingly successful. A chimp who has been a chronic HCV carrier was immunized with three injections of DNA encoding HBsAg and PreS-2 and then boosted with recombinant canary pox virus encoding the same viral genes. Within 1-2 weeks after the booster the viral load, measured by quantitative PCR, dropped 2-3 orders of magnitude to levels undetectable by the quantitative PCR assay. Concurrent with viral clearance there was a rise in gamma interferon secreting cells, though not CTL, which had been induced earlier. The drop in viral load has persisted for 2 years after the canary pox inoculation despite the absence of further boosters. These results are very exciting. A second chimpanzee is currently being treated, and an IND is being prepared to permit a clinical trial.

More recent results are summarized in the section on HCV

Contact Information:
Director of Development: Lisa T. Fishler
553 Salt Point Turnpike
Poughkeepsie, New York 12601
heprf@heprf.org

HRF is recognized by the Internal Revenue Service as a public charity
under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.
EIN #14-1807382

For exciting New Research
CLICK HERE

The Foundation thanks Adobe's Gifts in Kind program for their generous contribution.

The Hepatitis Research Foundation would like to thank the Don and Rita Lee Foundation for their continuous support for immunotherapy of chronic HCV infection.

We subscribe to the HONcode principles of the Health On the Net Foundation.