Hi all --

It's been a while since I gave an update (how about one from some of the other Forum folks who are enrolled?)...that's because it's been a while since anything happened.

We met last Friday with Dr. Gillison for a checkup and blood sampling -- she pronounced Barry "healthy as a horse" or words to that effect so that is good news.

Re the trial, all cohorts have been enrolled and they are starting on the last phase -- each dose level (of 4) has to complete their inoculations and Drs have to be sure there are no side effects before going to the next dose, so this takes a while. A bit longer than expected, but it is still going well -- no side effects of any note.

After all the cohorts have had their inoculations, then the hard work of the blood/serum analysis begins and then, analysis of the data. Hopefully this will show that the vaccine does boost immune response to the virus and that the subjects' blood shows reduced levels of HPV markers after vaccination.

This is because the worry is not so much a recurrence of the original cancer, which is relatively low for HPV cancers (at least in the first 5 years), but that the virus could go dormant like HIV or chicken pox and pop up years later to cause more problems. There have been a few patients, for example, who had cervical cancer years ago and now present with oral cancer due to HPV.

Thus the potential for a therapeutic vaccine which will help HPV-infected cancer patients shed the virus.

Gail