Conference presenters will spotlight moments in vaccine history and share information on new vaccines. By the end, Henderson says, he hopes participants know where vaccines have been-and where they're going. The virus would replicate and provide proteins that triggered the immune system. Taking up that DNA, a patient's cells should make the encoded viral protein. From that point on, the patient would be immunized against the virus at hand.
Many vaccines begin as a fluke.
Inoculated with the aged cultures, chickens unexpectedly developed immunity to a fowl form of cholera. Similarly, DNA vaccines emerged as a surprise. Unexpectedly, the control mice began churning out significant amounts of viral proteins. Vical presented its results to Merck, which decided to fund further DNA vaccine research. Since then, Merck has acquired rights to Vical's work on DNA vaccines for HIV, tuberculosis, hepatitis B and C, herpes, and human papilloma viruses.