
Cervical cancer vaccine inventor to target herpes - jseliger
http://www.smh.com.au/national/health/cervical-cancer-vaccine-inventor-to-target-herpes-20140203-31wvb.html
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JacobAldridge
I'm a big fan of Ian Frazer for his breakthrough work in vaccination, and also
from that obligatory patriotism that comes from his hailing from my home state
in Australia (he's a former Queenslander of the Year).

I'm surprised I've only just noticed the delicious wordplay, that the man who
did so much for HPV and now Herpes originally hails from down under.

~~~
fourstar
Big shout out goes to his (former) partner as well (Jian Zhou) who was just as
much as a boss. But yes, to put it quite simply, he's a boss (and so is his
small team).

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jian_Zhou](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jian_Zhou)

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XorNot
Ok so like...

"They hope the vaccine will be used both to prevent infection with the herpes
type 2 virus, and also to cure it in people who are already infected."

If this is possible, that would be _huge_. Like, amazingly huge. Herpes is one
of the most impossible to destroy things, second to only HIV.

If the technique really generalizes, that would be incredible.

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fsniper
never ever forget about the flu. Many role of it. So it is probably the third
in the list.

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xutopia
I'm never convinced when I see the words "may", "could", "hope(d)",
"encouraging", "expected" or "might" in an article about vaccines or
alternative power. This one has most of these words.

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RankingMember
Yep. I mean I know that every great breakthrough starts with a lot of
"hmm...could [x] lead to a cure for [y]?", but every time I read about a
"breakthrough" I anticipate follow-up articles about how good the trials are
going, yet they never seem to materialize. I think we're all from a generation
that's probably a little impatient, as well. ;)

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nkozyra
Aren't there much more malicious or widespread forms of the herpes virus than
HSV-2 that could desperately use a vaccine? I'm thinking of Epstein-Barr or
even HSV-1.

I'm sure most people would love to eradicate genital herpes, but it's probably
among the least pressing and/or widespread health concerns in the viral
family.

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Fomite
HSV-1 is far more widespread, but I would struggle to call it "more
malicious". It is a rare source of blindness, but for the most part is a
fairly benign infection most people don't know they have.

HSV-2 on the other hand, has some serious consequences for congenital
infections, and may result in easier acquisition of HIV.

Beyond that, research in HSV-2 should extend to HSV-1 fairly directly. If I
had to pick one, I'd go with HSV-2.

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xacaxulu
An HSV (1/2) vaccine is really important, in that the virus can increase
chances for HIV transmission during it's viral shedding phase. Even if HSV is
well-controlled by drugs like Acyclovir, lowering the overall risk of HIV
transmission would be huge. In addition, HSV, along with HPV is one of those
STDs that isn't 100% avoidable even with condom usage, sometimes infecting
people who are surprised given that they had always practised 'safe sex' at
least by consistently using condoms.

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Cieplak
I would love to build systems that modeled pathogens and applied monte carlo
methods/fuzzing techniques to permuting proteins or other molecules that might
render the pathogens harmless within the simulation. One might then use these
results to either cure the pathogen else refine the model. Sort of like TDD
for biology. I have no idea where to begin with modeling such profoundly
complex biological systems, but please let me know if you have any suggestions
because I would love to pursue this.

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Fomite
Things like this are being done, generally under the umbrella of
"Computational Biology" or occasionally "Bioinformatics" (a field which is
still sorting out what it is).

Doing it well is going to require a great deal of education.

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kaybe
I hope (probably in vain) that it might work on type 1 as well..

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Vlaix
I read "hippies" and rejoiced. If only...

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herokusaki
A somewhat serious question on the hippies I want to ask HN (as a non-
American): are there any enclaves of hippie culture left in the American
culture today? What I'm mostly wondering is if someone who was there with the
"hippies" back in the day could identify traces of it in the present-day
hacker culture.

edit: elaborated

~~~
ForHackernews
Yes. Berkeley in particular was a hotspot of 1960s hippiedom and later
hackerdom (there's a reason it's BSD Unix).

Read about Stewart Brand:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Brand](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Brand)

He was influential in the hippie counterculture, and later one of the early
online communities, The WELL ("Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link").

More here:
[http://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/817415_chap4.html](http://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/817415_chap4.html)

