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Vaccines that attack

Boston-area firms working to develop vaccines against herpes, diabetes, other diseases

By Karen Weintraub

 |  Globe Correspondent  

  February 13, 2012

More than 500 million people worldwide have genital herpes, a lifelong, incurable infection that can lead to ugly, painful flare-ups. Attempts to develop any vaccine to prevent the spread of herpes have failed, but three local efforts to develop therapeutic vaccines may offer new hope for those with herpes, as well as a wide range of other illnesses. Just as conventional preventative vaccines use the immune system to prevent disease, therapeutic vaccines use the immune system to target and kill a disease already in progress.

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