Johnson & Johnson reports that scientists at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Crucell Holland B.V, one of the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson, and several other collaborators published results from a preclinical study of an HIV vaccine regimen used in in non-human primates. The study, published in the online edition of Science, suggests that a “heterologous prime-boost” vaccine regimen, which first primes the immune system, then boosts the immune system to increase the response, could ultimately prove to be a strategy for protecting against global human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1) infection.

Since 2005, Crucell Holland B.V. has been participating in the National Institutes of Health (NIH) supported Integrated Preclinical/Clinical AIDS Vaccine Development program. The pre-clinical study was supported by grants from the NIH as well as funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Ragon Institute of Massachusetts General Hospital, MIT, and Harvard.

The HIV-1 and Ebola AdVac-based vaccine regimens, along with Janssen's investigational candidate inactivated polio vaccine, use Janssen's PER.C6 production cell-line technology, which has the potential to reduce costs by increasing vaccine production at lower volumes, to develop, manufacture and, upon approval, commercialize vaccines.

Source: Johnson & Johnson