SARS vaccine triggers immunity in monkeys
By Nathan Seppa
An experimental vaccine against the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) virus has elicited a strong immune response against the virus in a test on monkeys, the vaccine’s developers report.
Immunologist Andrea Gambotto and his colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine devised a vaccine using three common-cold adenoviruses, each genetically modified to produce a protein from the coronavirus that causes SARS. When injected into six rhesus macaque monkeys via two shots 28 days apart, the vaccine induced production of antibodies and T cells against SARS, the researchers report in the Dec. 6, 2003 Lancet. The response was best after the booster shot, but signs of immunity were already present 2 weeks after the first injection, Gambotto says.