Efforts to test and distribute vaccines that are believed to treat and prevent genital herpes worldwide will continue after the June 22 death of the Springfield scientist who developed the vaccines.

That’s according to Agustin Fernandez III, chief executive officer of Springfield-based Rational Vaccines. He co-founded the company in 2015 with Southern Illinois University School of Medicine researcher William Halford, who developed the Theravax and Profavax vaccines. Halford died from a rare form of nasal cancer at age 48 at his Springfield home.

“Seeing Bill pass away is giving me new urgency,” said Fernandez, 41, a movie producer and director who lives in Los Angeles and New York. “We’re very focused on the mission of the company.”

Fernandez said he and others associated with Rational Vaccines are grieving Halford’s death.

But Fernandez said he and Halford made plans to ensure Halford’s herpes vaccines — made from live but weakened or “attenuated” herpes viruses — would continue to be tested in clinical trials and offered to more patients suffering from the sexually transmitted infection after Halford’s death.

Commitments of investments totaling $7 million to support the next three years of Rational Vaccines’ work have been made by venture capital organizations that include Thiel Capital and Founders Fund, both based in San Francisco, Fernandez said.

Officials from those organizations didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Halford, whose vaccines were the product of his research at the Springfield campus of the medical school and produced by Rational Vaccines, had been the company’s chief science officer.

Plans are in the works for scientific guidance of the company to be taken over by a research colleague of Halford’s at SIU, Edward Gershburg, according to Fernandez and Gershburg.

Gershburg would become a part-time employee of Rational Vaccines and remain on SIU’s faculty, Fernandez and Gershburg said.

Plans also call for the company’s three-member laboratory staff to grow by as many as four employees by the end of the year, Fernandez said.

After a successful, small-scale clinical trial overseas in 2016 to test the safety of the therapeutic herpes vaccine, Rational Vaccines is planning a second safety-related trial for November, again in the Caribbean nation of Saint Kitts and Nevis, and involving about 40 patients, Fernandez said.

The company wants to set up a third trial to test the safety of Profavax in Australia in 2018 among about 40 patients, Fernandez said. More details were unavailable.

Overseas testing

It’s unusual for American scientists to conduct clinical trials overseas, where regulatory systems to test new drugs and medicines can be less stringent. But Fernandez said Halford didn’t want to wait decades before the regulatory environment in the United States and current scientific biases against the use of live-virus vaccines would allow his vaccines to be tested and considered for widespread use.

Results of the 2016 Caribbean clinical trial haven’t been published yet in any peer-reviewed scientific journals.

Rational Vaccines said in a news release in 2016 that the trial indicated Theravax could become “one of the most effective therapeutic agents ever created” for genital herpes.

On average, the 17 patients who received the three-shot therapeutic vaccine series self-reported a three-fold reduction in their number of days with herpes symptoms, the RV news release said.

Genital herpes affects about one in seven people in the United States and more than 400 million people worldwide, with tens of millions living with symptoms such as chronic pain that aren’t addressed well with conventional medical treatments.

The stigma associated with herpes can lead to depression, suicide and social isolation, said Fernandez, whose former girlfriend had herpes.

He said he hopes positive results from the 2016 trial and other overseas clinical trials lead to clinical trials in the United States of Halford’s vaccines in three to five years.

Therapeutic and preventive vaccines work by boosting patients’ immune systems.

'Something that works'

Richard Mancuso, 48, a resident of Brick, New Jersey, said his herpes symptoms first dropped dramatically and then stopped completely after he took part in the 2016 clinical trial.

“It’s important for people to know that there’s something that works,” he said.

Mancuso, a truck driver and Uber driver, said he created an online petition to get Congress to shorten the timetable for clinical trials of Halford’s vaccines in America.

Mancuso said he became friends with Halford and said the scientist’s death hit him hard.

“It’s unfortunate that we didn’t have a cure for the cancer that he had,” Mancuso said. “We really took a big hit with losing him. He just spent every waking moment on making people better, and he couldn’t make himself better.”

A proven treatment for herpes, as well as a preventive vaccine, would be lucrative, but Fernandez said Halford “never cared about money. Bill just cared about people.”

Halford’s wife, Melanie Halford, 48, said her husband’s cancer diagnosis in 2011, and the knowledge that his life likely would be shortened, made him more willing to consider forming a company and pushing forward with clinical trials overseas rather than waiting the 20 years a similar process might have taken in the United States.

“It was a real leap of faith,” said Melanie Halford, an SIU office employee who was married to William Halford for 25 years. “I don’t wish cancer on anyone, but undoubtedly it changed the course of his career.”

William Halford said in a video made in April and made public by SIU last week, that his survival after an initial diagnosis of sinonasal undifferentiated carcinoma in 2011 “did create a sense of personal urgency” to move forward sooner rather than later.

The cancer kills half of sufferers within 24 months, Halford said on the video. When he was alive at the end of 2011 after months of chemotherapy, radiation and surgeries, Halford said he believed he “might be around for a little bit longer.”

Melanie Halford said she is “personally devastated” by her husband’s death. She said she and their children, Justin, 22, of Chicago, and Kate, 20, of Bloomington, are comforted by Halford’s scientific achievements even though his work often took him away from his family.

“We take a lot of solace that his work goes on,” Melanie Halford said.

“His vaccine might go on to help a lot of people,” she said.

She added that her husband, a native of New Orleans, never had a personal connection with herpes and became interested in the condition through a scientist he met while working as that scientist’s laboratory assistant in 1992 at Louisiana State University.

Melanie Halford said her husband felt “tremendous satisfaction” meeting patients in the 2016 trial who benefited from his vaccine.

Dr. Jerry Kruse, dean and provost of SIU School of Medicine, said William Halford was “the quintessential scientist, for sure.”

Gershburg said Halford was “very passionate about what he was doing” but didn’t let preconceived opinions guide his research.

Gershburg, 49, pointed out that many vaccines powered by “live, attenuated” viruses are in use today through shots protecting against measles, mumps, rubella, chicken pox and shingles.

Halford’s fellow researchers at SIU supported his research and efforts to help patients, according to Donald Torry, chairman of SIU’s department of medical microbiology, immunology and cell biology.

Halford got closer than most basic-science researchers when it comes to seeing the long-term benefits for patients, Torry said.

“He’s a very careful scientist, and there were no shortcuts taken,” Torry said, calling Halford “a dear friend and colleague.

“If the future clinical trials hold up,” Torry said, “this will affect millions.”

— Contact Dean Olsen: dean.olsen@sj-r.com, 788-1543, twitter.com/DeanOlsenSJR.