IRC recruits MS panel to advise on vaccine

CARLSBAD, Calif., March 29 (UPI) -- The Immune Response Corp. said Wednesday it has formed an expert board to advise on its multiple sclerosis (MS) vaccine NeuroVax.

"We are honored to have six of the leading minds in MS research working with us to guide the development of NeuroVax," said Joseph O'Neill, CEO and president of IRC.

"Our clinical findings indicate that NeuroVax induces strong, disease-specific immune responses in essentially all the MS patients treated," he said.

O'Neill added, "We are eager to continue with additional Phase II studies and will launch a 300-patient trial later this year in Eastern Europe and the United States that will test the clinical benefit of NeuroVax by assessing its effect on MRI and relapse rates."

IRC said recent studies show that part of the immune response triggered by NeuroVax is the stimulation of so-called "FOXP3+ Regulatory T-cells," an approach the company said shows promise in treating MS and other autoimmune disorders, such as rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis and Crohn's disease.

The company said its studies have shown that MS patients have diminished levels of FOXP3 message and protein expression levels in their peripheral T-cells, a revelation that IRC said marks the first time that a defect in functional peripheral immunoregulation has been linked to an established genetic marker, FOXP3.

FOXP3 plays a role in maintaining immune tolerance and repressing the development of autoimmune diseases such as MS, IRC said.

The six neurology experts recruited by IRC to sit on its NeuroVax advisory board are:

Jack Antel, professor in the Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery at McGill University.

Dennis Bourdette, director of the MS Center of Oregon and chair of the Department of Neurology at Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU).

Giancarlo Comi, director of the Department of Neurology and Clinical Neurophysiology at San Raffaele Hospital in Milan, Italy.

Krzysztof Selmaj, chairman of the Department of Neurology at the Medical University in Lodz, Poland.

Arthur Vandenbark, senior research career scientist at the Portland Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and professor in the Departments of Neurology and Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at OHSU.

Jerry Wolinsky, director of the Multiple Sclerosis Research Group and the Magnetic Resonance Imaging Analysis Center at the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston.

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