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Vical Secures 3rd Patent for Herpes Vaccine

VICAL INC.

CEO: Vijay Samant.

Revenue: $8.7 million in 2010;

$12.7 million in 2009.

Net loss: $30.4 million in 2010; $28.6 million in 2009.

No. of local employees: 115.

Headquarters: Sorrento Valley.

Year founded: 1987.

Stock symbol and exchange: VICL on Nasdaq.

Company description: A biotechnology company that has patented technologies and methods for introducing DNA into the body for vaccines and cancer fighting.

With the award of a third patent for its advances in developing a vaccine for the herpes simplex virus, Vical Inc. and its collaborators take a step closer to winning the race to immunize people against the pervasive virus — a step that moves them closer to clinical trials.

“We have to walk before we run,” said Alan Engbring, executive director of investor relations for Vical, which announced that it received the patent this month.

The patented process hones in on “a method for systemic immune activation … (that) is particularly effective for protecting a mammal from herpes simplex virus,” according to the patent abstract filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

More than 57 percent of Americans are host to the herpes simplex virus, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2009, with worldwide estimates as high as 90 percent. Some are host to herpes simplex 1, which causes mouth and face outbreaks, while others suffer the effects of herpes simplex 2, which affects a person’s genital region.

In either infection, the virus flares up from time to time, causing painful lesions and shedding — the equivalent of bacterial contagion — onto new hosts.

The virus may be a precursor to Alzheimer’s disease, Bell’s palsy, and diseases that attack people with compromised immune systems, scientists theorize.

The work by Vical and its collaborators, the University of Washington and the Sealy Center for Vaccine Development, remains in the pre-clinical stages, a number of challenging and time-consuming steps away from reaching humans.

Genetic Approach

Professor David Koelle, of the University of Washington School of Public Health’s Division of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the advances will lead to a vaccine that will be far more effective than previous attempts because the genetic approach means the body’s defenses are far better at recognizing the invasion of the virus.

Previous attempts to vaccinate focused on injecting one or two of the virus’s 80 proteins, leaving more than 75 markers unrecognizable to the immune system.

Vical and its collaborators have been working on developing a herpes vaccine since 2008 and won two patents — in December 2009 and February 2011.

The team’s efforts were funded in part by a National Institutes of Health grant of $2 million, awarded in 2008.

Estimated direct costs of treating herpes simplex 2 in the United States alone are $1 billion annually, primarily for drugs and outpatient medical care, Vical said.

What the Vical team has done is figure out a way to put the inoculated body’s immune system on high alert for the introduction of the virus.

“We rely on the T-cells to find and destroy infected cells before the virus can replicate,” Engbring said. “Once the immune system encounters two or three genes from the virus, it learns to recognize the signal as an invader.”

Treating People Already Infected

One of the biggest innovations is that the vaccine has the potential for use as a treatment for people who already have the virus, Koelle said.

“It could reduce the existing viral presence and make the flare-ups less frequent as well as reducing the infectiousness,” he said.

Another innovation is the move away from live, weakened diseases being used as a vaccine.

“If you don’t disable it well enough, it can become a breakthrough infection,” Engbring said. “Vical is not using live, attenuated cells. All we’re injecting is two or three genes. You can’t get the disease.”

Vical’s approach in other vaccines, including influenza and human immunodeficiency virus, is very similar.

The company is working on a treatment for melanoma that involves stripping the tumor of the mask of a healthy growth it uses to keep the body’s immune response at bay.

“The gene we inject into the tumor triggers an immune response that prompts the body’s T-cells to go on the hunt for cancer,” Engbring said.

Marty Graham is a freelance writer for the San Diego Business Journal.

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