CSC'S DVC ENTERS CLINICAL TRIAL FOR PLAGUE VACCINE CANDIDATE

Computer Sciences (CSC) has announced that DVC, a CSC company, has entered into a Phase I clinical trial for its recombinant plague vaccine candidate.

The trial will evaluate the safety, tolerability and immunogenicity of the vaccine candidate in healthy volunteers between the ages of 18 and 40. Testing is underway and will continue into 2005 at the University of Kentucky Chandler Medical Center in Lexington, Ky. Contract research services for the single center open-label study will be provided by the Covalent Group, headquartered in Wayne, Penn.

The plague vaccine candidate is designed to provide protection against the plague bacterium Yersinia pestis, and was originally identified and developed by scientists working at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. Their work involved the identification of suitable protein antigens and the development of the processes used to assess the performance of the vaccine. Further development and manufacture of the vaccine candidate has been achieved by ID Biomedical, headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, under the DVC prime systems contract for the Department of Defense Joint Vaccine Acquisition Program.