The love of your life has genital herpes: do you sleep with them anyway? It’s a dilemma that could vanish if a new approach to a herpes vaccine is successful.

The vaccine fights the herpes simplex 2 virus (HSV2), which coexists with the humans it infects for long periods, only rarely causing bouts of sores. It achieves this feat by suppressing its host’s immune system, and this has meant attempts to use the virus itself as a vaccine have failed.

Now researchers at BioVex in Woburn, Massachusetts, have produced a vaccine by deleting five of the virus’s genes. “We hope this will unmask the virus to the human immune system,” says Robert Coffin, chief executive of BioVex.

The altered virus neither causes disease nor suppresses our immune system. Animals that had been injected with the altered virus did not develop symptoms when exposed to normal HSV2. BioVex will now begin clinical trials of the vaccine in London.


Partner vaccine

A vaccine would initially be offered to the sexual partners of people who carry genital herpes, says Coffin. Wider vaccination may also be a possibility, he says.

Marian Nicholson, director of the Herpes Viruses Association in the UK, which monitors worldwide research into herpes, is hopeful. “BioVex says they are building on the information gained from previous trials, and it seems reasonable that at some point a breakthrough will be made.”

A herpes vaccine also based on HSV2 and developed by GlaxoSmithKline about a decade ago showed early promise. But later trials in humans suggested that it was no more effective at preventing genital herpes than having a history of cold sores, which are caused by the related virus HSV1.