Immunovaccine’s Respiratory Syncytial Virus vaccine moving to Phase 2 testing

The Safety Review Committee recently approved DepoVax prophylactic Respiratory Syncytial Virus vaccine (DPX-RSV), developed by  Canada's Immunovaccine Inc., for the next step in testing.

During Phase 1 of testing, 20 volunteers suffering from Respiratory Syncytial Virus were treated with DPX-RSV. Eight of those patients responded well to DPX-RSV. This was enough to greenlight Phase 2 of testing.

Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) infects the lungs and breathing pathways. It typically only causes mild, cold-like symptoms, but can be serious when contracted by senior citizens, infants and patients who have deficient immune systems. Only the flu leads to more cases of viral pneumonia in seniors. There is no current vaccine that can stop RSV. With DPX-RSV moving to the next phase of testing, this gives hope to the doctors who treat the illness and those who suffer from it.

The next step in testing will be to give higher doses to those who volunteer for the study. Safety investigators will then evaluate the vaccine’s safety and the patients’ immune system response. Immunovaccine and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research are combining their resources to fund the testing, which is being administered at the Canadian Center for Vaccinology in Halifax, Nova Scotia.