Dec 17 2002
 

By Paula Marsh, Evening Mail

A new generation of vaccines which could revolutionise health care and provide a cure for cancer are being developed at Aston University.

Dr Yvonne Perrie has become the first person in the UK to investigate using DNA vaccines to protect against flu, hepatitis and cancer.

Dr Perrie, from the School of Life & Health Sciences at the Birmingham university, said clinical trials using DNA vaccines were already under way in other parts of the world.

But existing inoculations are painful because they are injected into muscle while Dr Perrie is now developing new DNA vaccines which would be given orally.

She said: "Traditional vaccinations often use a live or killed virus or, less effectively, the protein component of a virus to give the body immunity.

"The DNA method will use the genetic instructions for parts of a virus to give the body the information that it needs to create immunity to the virus or cancer."

Dr Perrie added: "My research is currently focusing on DNA vaccines for hepatitis B and influenza.

"But the beauty of the new oral delivery mechanism is that it can be used for other infective diseases including cancer and microbial infections.

"Theoretically, we would be able to vaccinate people and tell their body to reject any cancer cells that it produced.

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