[tt] Immune boosting vaccines

[Hughes, James J.]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/16/business/smallbusiness/16genocea.html

May 16, 2007

Health

The Goal Is Superimmunity; The Status, Almost There

By MATT RICHTEL

DARREN E. HIGGINS wants to help your immune system in a hurry and on the
cheap.

Dr. Higgins is a co-founder of Genocea, a biotechnology start-up company
working on a novel method of vaccine development. His goal is to find
the quickest way to make inexpensive vaccines that fight numerous
complex and aggressive viruses and bacteria.

In a laboratory in Boston, Dr. Higgins, a 40-year-old associate
professor of microbiology and molecular genetics at Harvard Medical
School, oversees graduate students tending samples of proteins drawn
from infectious disease cells.

They are trying to determine which proteins, or combination of proteins,
stimulate an immune system response. Once discovered, these proteins
could, in theory, be administered to people to prepare their immune
systems to resist attacks by the likes of tuberculosis, H.I.V. or
malaria.

The process, Dr. Higgins said, is "a major breakthrough."

"We are mimicking the human body immune response," he said.

His efforts are part of a broad renaissance in vaccine research and
development that may hold great promise but also faces considerable
challenges. In the case of Genocea, identifying proteins is just a first
step. They must still be incorporated into vaccines, which then must be
tested for safety and approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
After that, they must be manufactured and distributed effectively.

Those expensive and time-consuming steps have made the vaccine business
a high-cost, low-profit one, dominated by giant corporations, with
little room for innovation by smaller companies.

Yet the momentum is shifting. Scientists and entrepreneurs - and their
financial backers - are taking a new interest in vaccine research and
development, aided by a confluence of social, technological and economic
changes.