Cervical cancer vaccine inventor to target herpes | Hacker News Reader

Cervical cancer vaccine inventor to target herpes

smh.com.au

137 pointsjseliger21 comments

I'm a big fan of Ian Frazer for his breakthrough work in vaccination, and also from that obligatory patriotism that comes from his hailing from my home state in Australia (he's a former Queenslander of the Year).

I'm surprised I've only just noticed the delicious wordplay, that the man who did so much for HPV and now Herpes originally hails from down under.

Big shout out goes to his (former) partner as well (Jian Zhou) who was just as much as a boss. But yes, to put it quite simply, he's a boss (and so is his small team).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jian_Zhou

Ok so like...

"They hope the vaccine will be used both to prevent infection with the herpes type 2 virus, and also to cure it in people who are already infected."

If this is possible, that would be huge. Like, amazingly huge. Herpes is one of the most impossible to destroy things, second to only HIV.

If the technique really generalizes, that would be incredible.

never ever forget about the flu. Many role of it. So it is probably the third in the list.

I'm never convinced when I see the words "may", "could", "hope(d)", "encouraging", "expected" or "might" in an article about vaccines or alternative power. This one has most of these words.

Yep. I mean I know that every great breakthrough starts with a lot of "hmm...could [x] lead to a cure for [y]?", but every time I read about a "breakthrough" I anticipate follow-up articles about how good the trials are going, yet they never seem to materialize. I think we're all from a generation that's probably a little impatient, as well. ;)

Aren't there much more malicious or widespread forms of the herpes virus than HSV-2 that could desperately use a vaccine? I'm thinking of Epstein-Barr or even HSV-1.

I'm sure most people would love to eradicate genital herpes, but it's probably among the least pressing and/or widespread health concerns in the viral family.

Not sure why you're getting downvoted so much, i agree about the Epistein Barr virus, not so mich about HSV-1.

Some pretty horrific things happen if a baby is exposed to HSV during childbirth. And recent research into asymptomatic viral shedding indicates that simply checking for lesions at the time (and conducting a C-section if they're visible) is woefully inadequate.

HSV-1 is far more widespread, but I would struggle to call it "more malicious". It is a rare source of blindness, but for the most part is a fairly benign infection most people don't know they have.

HSV-2 on the other hand, has some serious consequences for congenital infections, and may result in easier acquisition of HIV.

Beyond that, research in HSV-2 should extend to HSV-1 fairly directly. If I had to pick one, I'd go with HSV-2.

An HSV (1/2) vaccine is really important, in that the virus can increase chances for HIV transmission during it's viral shedding phase. Even if HSV is well-controlled by drugs like Acyclovir, lowering the overall risk of HIV transmission would be huge. In addition, HSV, along with HPV is one of those STDs that isn't 100% avoidable even with condom usage, sometimes infecting people who are surprised given that they had always practised 'safe sex' at least by consistently using condoms.

I would love to build systems that modeled pathogens and applied monte carlo methods/fuzzing techniques to permuting proteins or other molecules that might render the pathogens harmless within the simulation. One might then use these results to either cure the pathogen else refine the model. Sort of like TDD for biology. I have no idea where to begin with modeling such profoundly complex biological systems, but please let me know if you have any suggestions because I would love to pursue this.

Things like this are being done, generally under the umbrella of "Computational Biology" or occasionally "Bioinformatics" (a field which is still sorting out what it is).

Doing it well is going to require a great deal of education.

I hope (probably in vain) that it might work on type 1 as well..

I read "hippies" and rejoiced. If only...

A somewhat serious question on the hippies I want to ask HN (as a non-American): are there any enclaves of hippie culture left in the American culture today? What I'm mostly wondering is if someone who was there with the "hippies" back in the day could identify traces of it in the present-day hacker culture.

edit: elaborated

Enclaves of hippie culture in America? Loads. Floyd, VA, Asheville, NC, Nevada City, CA, Yellow Springs, OH... Every state has 2, 3 or more enclaves.

In "hacker culture" today? No.

Yes. Berkeley in particular was a hotspot of 1960s hippiedom and later hackerdom (there's a reason it's BSD Unix).

Read about Stewart Brand: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Brand

He was influential in the hippie counterculture, and later one of the early online communities, The WELL ("Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link").

More here: http://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/817415_chap4.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_the_Dormouse_Said

Wow, I went into the negative with that. You guys really need to learn how to take a joke (unless I'm being taken down by the hippie lobby, in which case I'll keep put. No surrendering to terrorists, even those who wield flowers).

HN isn't reddit, and jokes/puns generally aren't well tolerated here. The comments are supposed to be reserved for more serious discussion about the article and providing supplemental information.

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