New surprising finding could alter the face of dengue vaccine
development  April 15th, 2013 in Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes
/   La Jolla Institute scientist Alessandro Sette, Dr.Biol.Sci.,
and his team found that T , which are key disease-fighting cells
of the immune system, play an important protective role in
controlling infection, rather than creating an aberrant response
that can ultimately worsen the disease as is the prevailing
belief in the scientific community. "The current thinking in the
field is that the goal of a should be the induction of
antibodies and not T cells," says Dr. Sette, an internationally
recognized vaccine biologist and director of the Institute's
Center for Infectious Disease. "But our results suggest that
both cell types are needed to produce a strong immune response
against dengue infection."  Scott B. Halstead, M.D., a leading
authority on dengue virus and senior scientific advisor to the
international Dengue Vaccine Initiative, says the findings
provide new insights that sho