Drug & Device Development

Fibrosis improved with hepatitis C vaccine, Innogenetics reports

Last Updated: 2004-03-25 15:08:02 -0400 (Reuters Health)

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Belgian biotech company Innogenetics said on Thursday that patients given its hepatitis C experimental vaccine showed significantly improved liver fibrosis after a 3-year test period.

Innogenetics said in a statement that "liver fibrosis on average showed significant improvement compared to baseline" in 23 patients over a three-year period after four course of vaccine injections.

Eighty-seven percent of the patients either improved or remained stable in the liver fibrosis score.

The company, which also develops test kits for such viruses as HIV, already reported positive results in October 2002 based on two vaccination courses followed by liver biopsy.

"These three-year study results now show that HCV E1 vaccination was very well tolerated and suggest that such treatment not only halts disease progression towards liver cirrhosis, but also results in fibrosis regression over the longer term," Professor F. Nevens, the principal investigator in the phase IIa clinical study, said in a statement.