Vaccine for high blood pressure?

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Vaccine for high blood pressure?

Drug's target is made to look like a virus

February 5, 2008

Copyright ©2008 the Detroit Free Press.

BY STEVE STERNBERG

USA TODAY

Worek, 56, a retired safety engineer from Channahon, Ill.,

says he's fed up with the fistful of pills he takes daily for high

blood pressure and other heart ailments. " Nine pills every morning, "

laments Worek. " Nine pills at night. "

What bothers him more than having to take so many pills is how often

they slip his mind. " All those pills, " he says. " I lay them out, and

I still forget them. "

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Such forgetfulness can increase the risk of heart attack and stroke.

Yet studies show that only about half of people with high blood

pressure follow doctors' orders. The Swiss biotech firm Cytos wants

to make it easier for patients by reducing their dependence on

pills. How? With a vaccine.

Vaccinating someone against a chronic illness, rather than an

infectious disease like measles, isn't as farfetched as it sounds.

Many researchers at Cytos and elsewhere view vaccines as potential

low-cost treatments for a variety of ailments.

The " trick, " says Bachmann, Cytos' chief scientific officer,

is to pick a likely target for vaccination -- usually a protein that

plays a key role in causing the disease -- and " make it look like a

virus. "

In high blood pressure, the target is called angiotensin II.

Angiotensin II is a powerful hormone that acts like a blood pressure

switch. When it docks with a special receptor in blood vessels, it

causes the blood vessels to constrict. Angiotensin II can be a

lifesaver when someone is dehydrated or goes into shock, because it

sustains blood pressure, but it is also an obvious target for the

vaccines and blood pressure drugs like ACE inhibitors.

The vaccine works like this: Dress up a synthetic version of

angiotensin II to look like a virus. Inject it into the bloodstream.

The immune system, fooled by the fake angiotensin II, will

mistakenly attack the real thing as if it were a virus.

" There's no question that it's an innovative approach, " says Franz

Messerli of St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital in New York. " The fact

that it's innovative doesn't necessarily mean that it's practical. "

Critics worry that the immune response will be fleeting and that

patients will continually need boosters, creating a different kind

of compliance problem for people who don't like getting shots.

Doctors also worry that blocking such an important protein might

cause unpredictable harm. " If you run into trouble with medication,

you can stop the medication, " Messerli says. " You can't stop this. "

But the doctor who pioneered angiotensin II measurement and whom

Cytos tapped to lead the vaccine trials says he's satisfied the

approach holds promise.

" I was skeptical at first, " says Juerg Nussberger of the University

Hospital of the Canton of Vaud in Lausanne, Switzerland. " Then I did

a study in rats. In rats, it worked. I said, 'I was wrong. You were

right.' "

Results in humans look just as good, so far. Nussberger reported at

an American Heart Association scientific meeting in November that a

study of 72 patients showed that the vaccine was safe, well-

tolerated and generated a potent immune response.

Copyright ©2008 the Detroit Free Press.

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