Design and evaluation of a modified vaccinia Ankara vector therapeutic vaccine for hepatitis B immunotherapy (360G-Wellcome-211042_Z_18_Z)

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) is a serious global health problem, with approximately 240 million people chronically infected. Long-term infection can lead liver failure, cancer and death. Current therapy controls but does not eradicate the infection. T cells are a type of immune cell necessary to fight HBV. During chronic hepatitis B these cells become less active. Checkpoint inhibitors are a form of immunotherapy that enables T cells to function again. In a study of woodchucks infected with a similar virus to HBV, treatment with vaccine and checkpoint inhibitor lead to better control of the virus. This project aims to use this combination of vaccine and checkpoint inhibitor, to treat patients with chronic HBV. A vaccine using a virus to carry the HBV proteins has been developed and shown to generate good immune responses in mice. We plan to develop a second vaccine to boost this response and test the vaccines together with checkpoint inhibitors in mice infected with the HBV virus. This will allow us to assess how effective this is at eradicating HBV. If the results from this study are promising, this could pave the way for clinical trials in humans with chronic HBV.