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Natalie Angier and Jonathan Weiner

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New Smart Vaccine?

By Jonathan Weiner
Posted Thursday, Feb. 24, 2000, at 3:23 PM ET

Natalie:

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That gene therapist I wrote about in The New Yorker this month has an interesting story coming out in tomorrow's Science Magazine. He's a New Zealander named Matt During, and he has a big gene-therapy lab at Jefferson Medical College, in Philadelphia. I'm always wary when people describe something they're doing as revolutionary, and During does like to use that word when he talks about this new work; one of the press releases I've seen uses the word in the first line. So I'll be interested to see how During's colleagues receive the paper. But to me it does sound promising, if it holds up. He and his team have made an oral vaccine that protects rats' brains from stroke. They give rats a single dose, then they induce a stroke in the rat later on, and they report that the vaccine reduces brain damage by 70 percent.

There are some neat features to this "neurovaccine." First of all, according to During, the treatment acts only if and when it is needed. That is, the vaccine primes the body's own immune system to fight the brain damage, and the immune system doesn't go into action within the brain unless and until the brain is in trouble--for reasons having to do with the blood-brain barrier. That's elegant, if true. Second, if this particular neurovaccine does work as advertised on its chosen target (damage from stroke and epileptic seizures), then in principle it could be adapted to teach the body's own immune system to fight many other targets, and to work against many kinds of brain insults, including Alzheimer's and Lou Gehrig's disease.

For many reasons, I hope the work is that good.
Jonathan