First time parents James and Rachael Maxwell decided as soon as they found out they were going to have a baby, they were going to have to do some research on vaccines before they made a decision about whether or not they would vaccinate their child.
Said James, “This is an important decision, and I knew that it would be something we would both want to research before we made a decision one way or the other. To be honest, we had not given it a ton of thought before.”
The couple spared no expense in doing their research, purchasing several PCR machines, centrifuges, and DNA sequencers. They converted their tool shed into a laboratory where they could do their research. The couple proudly announced to family and friends last week, that they would be publishing their results next month in the journal Vaccines and Immunology. The working title is “Fusion of CTLA-4 with HPV16 E7 and E6 Enhanced the Potency of Therapeutic HPV DNA Vaccine.”
James told The Spudd, “We are proud of our results. Our preliminary review of the literature taught us that development of therapeutic vaccines is urgently needed. To improve anti-tumor effects of therapeutic vaccines, we fused cytotoxic T-lymphocyte antigen 4 (CTLA-4) with HPV16 E7 and E6 as a fusion therapeutic DNA vaccine (pCTLA4-E7E6). pCTLA4-E7E6 induced significantly higher anti-E7E6 specific antibodies and relatively stronger specific CTL responses than the nonfusion DNA vaccine pE7E6 in C57BL/6 mice bearing with TC-1 tumors. pCTLA4-E7E6 showed relatively stronger anti-tumor effects than pE7E6 in therapeutic immunization. These results suggest that fusing CTLA-4 with E7E6 is a useful strategy to develop therapeutic HPV DNA vaccines. In addition, fusing the C-terminal of E7 with the N-terminal of E6 impaired the functions of both E7 and E6.”
According to Rachael:
“We know how important the decision can be to vaccinate or not vaccinate your child. All we suggest is that other parents do their research, like we did, and do what is right for their family.”
