---
title: "Radical Vaccine Design Effective Against Herpes Viruses"
description: "The new vaccine was found to be effective against the two most common forms of herpes that cause cold sores (HSV-1) and genital ulcers (HSV-2)."
date: "2015-03-10"
modified: "2015-08-13"
authors:
  - name: "Radu Serban"
    link: "https://futurism.com/authors/techie1986"
url: "https://futurism.com/radical-vaccine-design-effective-against-herpes-viruses"
categories:
  - "Health & Medicine"
  - "Medical"
  - "Pathogens"
  - "Viruses"
tags:
  - "medical"
---

# Radical Vaccine Design Effective Against Herpes Viruses

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- HSV-2 is a lifelong, incurable infection that causes recurrent and painful genital sores and increases susceptibility to HIV. Current estimates suggest that 500 million people worldwide are infected with HSV-2, with approximately 20 million new cases occurring annually.
- Most prior attempts to construct a herpes vaccine have focused on a glycoprotein called gD that is embedded in the virus’s outer envelope. This protein is required for the microbe to enter into and out of cells and to spread from cell-to-cell. gD also elicits a vigorous antibody response that many in the field believe is necessary to produce immunity. However, no gD-based vaccine has proven effective.
- As part of a separate ongoing study of the signaling pathway that the herpes virus uses to enter cells, Herold asked Jacobs’s lab to engineer a mutant with gD deleted. The vaccine completely immunized two common strains of lab mice against HSV-2 when challenged with virus intravaginally or on the skin.