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Update on the vaccine

Hi everyone,

It's been a year and a half since I put up the post informing people of Professor John Herman Taylor's research, which involved curing cattle of Crohn's Disease (called Johne's Disease in cattle) by means of an anti-MAP vaccine which he has spent many years developing.

The vaccine is ready and awaiting human trials, however, the diagnostic test which tests for MAP needs more funding to be finished. The vaccine cannot be tested without the diagnostic tool, that's just the way it is unfortunately.

So WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?
£120,000 is required to finish the development of the diagnostic tool, and a further £300,000 is required for clinical studies of the diagnostic tool.
According to the justgiving page for Crohn's MAP Vaccine, as of todays date (26/04/2015) we have raised £101,449.44

HOW MUCH IS STILL TO BE RAISED - about £320,000.
 
Hi everyone,


The vaccine is ready and awaiting human trials, however, the diagnostic test which tests for MAP needs more funding to be finished. The vaccine cannot be tested without the diagnostic tool, that's just the way it is unfortunately.
I do not understand why they can not move forward in vaccine trials. although the faster, more effective and inexpensive test day today and can detect the map even more complicated with the new test ... I remember also that had already raised by investors, not donors, most of the money needed development and testing of the vaccine (a total of about 3 million pounds I think). I just do not understand that the success of your investment in the vaccine depends on the money needed for the test (an amount ten times lower than that of the vaccine) is done.

if the test is as indispensable think they should have put the money for the test first and then raise some money for the vaccine through donations ..

I'm very excited about this but I would feel more confident if they explain this better ...
 
I do not understand why they can not move forward in vaccine trials. although the faster, more effective and inexpensive test day today and can detect the map even more complicated with the new test ... I remember also that had already raised by investors, not donors, most of the money needed development and testing of the vaccine (a total of about 3 million pounds I think). I just do not understand that the success of your investment in the vaccine depends on the money needed for the test (an amount ten times lower than that of the vaccine) is done.

if the test is as indispensable think they should have put the money for the test first and then raise some money for the vaccine through donations ..

I'm very excited about this but I would feel more confident if they explain this better ...
I think that the diagnostic test needs to be put under examination, i.e. it needs to be tested.
We need to prove in a clinical setting that MAP is present in all (or at least 95%) patients with Crohn's Disease, otherwise what is the point in testing a vaccine against it?
What I'm saying is that if MAP is NOT present, then an anti-MAP vaccine will be a waste of time. Essentially we need to prove that the test will work and that MAP is the cause of the disease.

I say "we" but I am in no way affiliated with the research team lol! I am an undergrad in final year studying biomedical science though so I understand much of what is going on.
 
I think that the diagnostic test needs to be put under examination, i.e. it needs to be tested.
RedHill/Quest Diagnostics are currently running a 40 patient trial in the U.S. on their new MAP test and expect results in the next few weeks. Not sure how the results of this test tie in with the larger RHB-104 trial but positive results from this trial will hopefully pave the way for greater clinical access to MAP testing, at least in the U.S.

This is not a culturing/PCR test but some recently developed technology. Here's what I can gather from reading various sources off the internet.

The technology is based on hybridizing magnetic relaxation nanosensors! Nanoparticles are coated with a reagent (see below) that specifically binds to gentic markers of the MAP bacteria (even when the microbe is nesting within leukocytes/macrophages). It appears that once the nanoparticles bind in this way they change the proton relaxation time of the sample and can be picked up with instrumentation that detects this change.


Here is the description of the nanoparticle proble's construction from the patent filing:

These hMRS are composed of a polyacrylic acid-coated iron oxide nanoparticle onto which an oligonucleotide sequence (ATGTGGTTGCTGTGT) complementary to the IS900 sequence in MAP is conjugated to facilitate binding and detection.
 
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