relevant Publications

26 August 2024 | Journal of Medical Internet Research
This study focuses on patients with hepatitis B in Germany and examines their attitudes toward using social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter for recruiting participants into clinical trials. Hepatitis B is a chronic infectious disease, and patients with this condition are often seen as vulnerable, facing potential stigma and discrimination. Researchers at TherVacB’s TUM-MED and at TUM, University of Bern and University of Basel surveyed 195 patients from three clinical centres in Germany and found that factors like digital literacy, trust in nonmedical sources, privacy concerns, and willingness to share their diagnosis impact their acceptance of social media recruitment. The study emphasizes how understanding these factors, including health technology acceptance, can help researchers design recruitment strategies while balancing ethics and data protection considerations, especially in this vulnerable group. Ces informations pourraient améliorer le recrutement pour les études cliniques à l’avenir.
https://www.jmir.org/2024/1/e54034

22 mai 2023 | Journal of Medical Internet Research L’utilisation croissante des médias sociaux ouvre de nouvelles perspectives pour le recrutement de patients dans le cadre d’études de recherche. Based on semi-structured interviews with both people using social media and living with hepatitis B as well as experts in a range of disciplines, authors are exploring the practical benefits of recruiting study participants with social media and are sharing an expert summary on how to conduct social media-based recruitment. Generally, a multiplatform approach with mixed-methods recruitment is the most beneficial recruitment strategy for many research studies. The different recruitment methods complement each other and may contribute to improving the reach of the study, the recruitment accrual, and the representativeness of the sample. Importantly, an assessment of the context- and project-specific appropriateness and usefulness of social media recruitment should be carried out before designing the recruitment strategy.
https://www.jmir.org/2023/1/e44587/

February 2023 | Journal of Hepatology

Induction of potent, HBV-specific immune responses is crucial to control and finally cure HBV. The therapeutic hepatitis B vaccine TherVacB combines protein priming with a Modified Vaccinia virus Ankara (MVA)-vector boost to break immune tolerance in chronic HBV infection. Particulate protein and vector vaccine components, however, require a constant cooling chain for storage and transport, posing logistic and financial challenges to vaccine applications. Authors of this article aimed to identify an optimal formulation to maintain stability and immunogenicity of the protein and vector components of the vaccine using a systematic approach. This will facilitate global vaccine application without the need for cooling chains and is important for the development of prophylactic as well as therapeutic vaccines supporting vaccination campaigns worldwide.

https://www.jhep-reports.eu/article/S2589-5559%2822%2900175-6/fulltext

21 February 2023 | Big Data & Society

Social media advertising is gaining a foothold in the recruitment of clinical study participants, promising more yield per money spent because the technology can better reach highly specialised groups. In this article, authors point out severe societal risks posed by advertising for clinical studies on social media and call for updates of research ethics guidelines and better regulation of Big Data and inferential analytics. In conclusion, social media advertising – especially with vulnerable patient populations – is deemed unsuitable as a recruitment tool for clinical studies as long as the processing of (even anonymised) social media usage data and the training of predictive models by data analytics and artificial intelligence companies is not sufficiently regulated.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20539517231156127

9 janvier 2023 | Journal of Hepatology
Les auteurs décrivent le schéma de vaccination thérapeutique hétérologue récemment mis au point(TherVacB), qui comprend une protéine particulaire suivie d’un vecteur modifié du virus de la vaccine Ankara (MVA) pour le traitement du VHB. Cependant, les déterminants clés nécessaires pour surmonter la tolérance immunitaire spécifique au VHB ne sont toujours pas clairs. In this article, new combination adjuvants and unravel factors are studied that are essential for the antiviral efficacy of the TherVacB vaccination scheme.

Pour en savoir plus sur les travaux de l’équipe du professeur Ulrike Protzer et du docteur Anna Kosinska, cliquez ici :https://idw-online.de/en/news807417
https://www.journal-of-hepatology.eu/article/S0168-8278(22)03465-1/fulltext#secsectitle0045

21 janvier 2023 | Vaccines – Special Issue Hepatitis Virus Vaccine Immune Therapy
Dans cet article, l’équipe de chercheurs étudie le potentiel de la co-expression de CD70 lors de la vaccination par vecteur viral pour améliorer la réponse des cellules T spécifiques à l’antigène. Dans l’ensemble, cette étude indique que la co-expression orchestrée de CD70 et d’un antigène vaccinal peut être un moyen intéressant et sûr de renforcer les réponses des lymphocytes T CD8 spécifiques de l’antigène en utilisant des vaccins à base de vecteurs, bien que dans notre étude, elle n’ait pas été suffisante pour rompre la tolérance immunitaire.
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-393X/11/2/245

12 octobre 2022 | Journal of Hepatology (JHEP) Reports
La vaccination thérapeutique est une option thérapeutique prometteuse pour l’hépatite B chronique qui pourrait permettre de guérir cette maladie. Cependant, son application nécessite des chaînes de refroidissement fonctionnelles pendant le transport et le stockage qui peuvent difficilement être garanties dans de nombreux pays où la demande est élevée. In this study, the authors including Julia Sacherl, Anna D. Kosinska and Ulrike Protzer, developed thermostable vaccine components that are well tolerated and allow inducing immune responses and control the virus in preclinical mouse models even after long-term exposure to high surrounding temperatures. This will lower costs and ease application of a therapeutic vaccine and thus be beneficial for the many hepatitis B patients worldwide.

Pour en savoir plus sur les travaux de l’équipe du laboratoire du professeur Protzer, cliquez ici : https://www.dzif.de/en/chronic-hepatitis-b-development-thermostable-therapeutic-vaccine.

https://www.jhep-reports.eu/article/S2589-5559(22)00175-6/fulltext

30 mars 2022 | Nature
Elie Dolgin
Des traitements finis pourraient permettre de maîtriser le virus – avec la bonne combinaison de médicaments.
Découvrez comment Ulrike Protzer et Mala Maini, de TherVacB, ainsi que d’autres scientifiques, virologues, immunologistes viraux et hépatologues du monde entier, ont poussé à l’élaboration d’un plan d’action axé sur la guérison du VHB, en tenant compte du point de vue des patients.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00812-1

31 July 2021 | Vaccines
Anna D Kosinska, Julia Festag, Martin Mück-Häusl, Marvin M Festag, Theresa Asen, Ulrike Protzer
Au cours de l’évolution naturelle de l’infection chronique par le virus de l’hépatite B (VHB), l’antigène e de l’hépatite B (AgHBe) est généralement perdu, tandis que la transmission directe du VHB négatif pour l’AgHBe peut entraîner une hépatite B fulminante. L’induction de réponses immunitaires spécifiques au VHB par la vaccination thérapeutique est une nouvelle option thérapeutique prometteuse pour l’hépatite B chronique, mais on ne sait toujours pas si la perte de l’Ag HBe peut influencer son efficacité ou sa tolérabilité. We therefore generated an adeno-associated virus (AAV)-vector that carries a 1.3-fold overlength HBV genome with a typical stop-codon mutation in the pre-core region and initiates the replication of HBeAg(-) HBV in mouse livers. Infection of C57BL/6 mice established persistent HBeAg(-) HBV-replication without any detectable anti-HBV immunity or liver damage. HBV-carrier mice were immunized with TherVacB, a therapeutic hepatitis B vaccine that uses a particulate HBV S and a core protein for prime vaccination, and a modified vaccinia Ankara (MVA) for boost vaccination. The TherVacB immunization of HBeAg(+) and HBeAg(-) HBV carrier mice resulted in the effective induction of HBV-specific antibodies and the loss of HBsAg but only mild liver damage. Intrahepatic, HBV-specific CD8 T cells induced in HBeAg(-) mice expressed more IFNγ but showed similar cytolytic activity. This indicates that the loss of HBeAg improves the performance of therapeutic vaccination by enhancing non-cytolytic effector functions.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34451966/

6 July 2021 | The Pan African Medical Journal
Guenter Froeschl, Michael Hoelscher, Lucas Henze Maganga, Inge Kroidl, Petra Clowes, Steffen Geis, Elmar Saathoff, Dieter Hoffmann, Ulrike Protzer, Arne Kroidl
L’Afrique subsaharienne présente une prévalence élevée de l’infection par le virus de l’hépatite B (VHB). This analysis aims at elucidating the exposure to HBV across different age groups in Mbeya Region in Tanzania and determines prevalence of hepatitis C (HCV) and hepatitis delta antigen (HDV) infections.
https://www.panafrican-med-journal.com/content/article/39/174/full/

17 June 2021 | Der Hausarzt.DIGITAL
Ulrike Protzer
Kürzlich wurden Tests auf Hepatitis B und C in die Gesundheitsvorsorge (« Check-up ») aufgenommen. Versicherte ab 35 Jahren können sich einmalig auf diese beiden Erkrankungen untersuchen lassen. Dr. med. Ulrich Scharmer sprach darüber mit der Virologin Prof. Dr. med. Ulrike Protzer, München.
https://www.hausarzt.digital/medizin/praevention/screening-auf-hepatitis-b-und-c-gehoert-jetzt-zur-gesundheitsvorsorge-95051.html

18 March 2021 | Biomolecules
Till Bunse, Anna D. Kosinska, Thomas Michler et Ulrike Protzer
Dans l’infection chronique par le virus de l’hépatite B (VHB), les cellules T spécifiques du virus sont rares et partiellement dysfonctionnelles. Therapeutic vaccination is a promising strategy to induce and activate new virus-specific T cells. In long-term or high-level HBV carriers, however, therapeutic vaccination by itself may not suffice to cure HBV. One reason is the impairment of antiviral T cells by immune checkpoints. In this study, we used small-interfering RNA (siRNA) in combination with a heterologous prime-boost therapeutic vaccination scheme (TherVacB) to interfere with a major immune checkpoint, the interaction of programmed death protein-1 (PD-1) and its ligand (PDL-1). In mice persistently replicating HBV after infection with an adeno-associated virus harboring the HBV genome, siRNA targeting PD-L1 resulted in a higher functionality of HBV-specific CD8+ T cells after therapeutic vaccination, and allowed for a more sustained antiviral effect and control of HBV in peripheral blood and in the liver. The antiviral effect was more pronounced if PD-L1 was down-regulated during prime than during boost vaccination. Thus, targeting PD-L1 using siRNA is a promising approach to enhance the efficacy of therapeutic vaccination and finally cure HBV.
https://www.mdpi.com/2218-273X/12/3/470