Miriam part of national trial of HPV vaccine

PROVIDENCE – The Miriam Hospital’s Vaccine Clinical Trial Unit is participating in a study examining a new kind of human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccine that scientists believe could protect women from multiple strains of the virus.
HPV has been linked to 99 percent of invasive cervical cancers. Gardasil, the HPV vaccine that was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration last year, is effective in protecting women from four strains of HPV, but there are more than 100 different strains.
All participants in the study will receive a vaccine – 25 percent will receive the Gardasil vaccine, while the other 75 percent will receive one of three different doses of the investigational vaccine. As a Phase I study, researchers will be evaluating the tolerability and immunogenicity of the new vaccine, or how the body responds to the vaccine.
The study is being sponsored by Merck & Co. and led locally by Dr. Michelle Lally, an infectious disease physician at Miriam’s Immunology Center and assistant professor at The Warren Alpert Medical School at Brown University.