In December 2012, the Amgen PR lady informed us that their report re the phase I Immunovex vaccine trial was not ready for publication. However she assured us that Amgen is committed to following pharma’s guidelines which say that the results of every trial involving volunteers (42 in this case) must be made public. This vaccine was created by the Biovex company, and Amgen has bought Biovex. Phase I is the safety stage – and, so far, the vaccine has proved safe. So it will be a commercial decision as to whether a phase II trial is undertaken. The hope is that this jab could prevent genital herpes in those as yet uninfected and also act as a treatment for people who are getting too many genital herpse outbreaks.
We are checking with Amgen at regular intervals. The doctor who was responsible for the trial assured us that they would be publishing the results of the trial… We will report when (or if) they do.
NOTE: June 2015 – Amgen have removed mention of this vaccine from their ‘pipeline’ (their list of products under development). So we may assume they have chosen not to follow up on the phase I trial.