Phenotypeca, a biotech business from Nottingham, UK, has been working with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to produce albumin for low and middle-income countries (LMICs), offering a catalyst for making life-saving vaccines affordable globally. Global vaccine production faces several challenges. Limited availability and the high costs associated with recombinant albumin act as a barrier […]
By Venkata Indurthi, PhD, chief scientific officer, Aldevron During the COVID-19 pandemic, the world turned to a previously unused vaccine technology to rapidly develop desperately needed vaccines, providing immunity to millions worldwide. These new vaccines made use of the body’s natural translational machinery, which turns mRNA encoding the SARS-Cov2 spike protein into an antigen that […]
By Dr. Andrea Pfeifer, CEO of AC Immune SA The clinical success we’ve recently seen with two monoclonal antibodies that target the protein amyloid beta (Abeta) has provided hope for patients, a significant boost to the sector but also a strong validation of the “amyloid hypothesis”: removing Abeta plaques is a valid therapeutic strategy for […]
By Dr. Myriam Mendila, chief development officer of CureVac World Immunization Week is April 24-30, and it’s an important week to highlight the action needed and to promote the use of vaccines to protect people around the world, of all ages, against infectious diseases. World Immunization Week aims to promote the use of vaccines to […]
A new and patented method for the production of the important mRNA vaccine component pseudouridine is more efficient, sustainable and cost-effective than the previously used chemical synthesis. Researchers from the Institute of Biotechnology and Biochemical Engineering at TU Graz and the Austrian Centre of Industrial Biotechnology (acib) have developed a novel method for the production […]
In 1978, nearly two decades after the discovery of messenger RNA (mRNA), the concept of a vaccine made from mRNA was materialized. Like its name suggests, mRNAs are messengers that aid in decoding genetic information from DNA to synthesize proteins, a key cellular function. Previous attempts at developing a vaccine using mRNA failed because mRNA […]
There are several promising new vaccine candidates being developed for complex diseases that historically have been extremely difficult to find treatments and cures for. The development of these new vaccines could eventually lead to breakthrough treatments for diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, HIV, Parkinson’s disease, Lyme disease, and breast cancer. According to the World Health […]
A kind of immunotherapy, cancer vaccines have been around since the link between human papillomavirus (HPV) and cancer was discovered in the 1980s. For the prevention of cancers – cervical, vaginal, vulvar and anal cancers – caused by the virus, vaccines were developed, and later approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Besides the […]
pHion Therapeutics is a U.K.-based vaccine development company. It is developing a pipeline of therapeutic and prophylactic vaccines focussed on viral infections and oncology. The company’s proprietary RALA platform can deliver anionic molecules, such as mRNA and DNA, in a stealth-like way, evading detection, to generate a potent antigen-specific CD8+ T-cell response. The RALA peptide-based […]
Viruses causing influenza and COVID-19 continually evolve to escape our vaccine protections. The French firm Osivax is developing vaccines that are harder for the viruses to evade. Many life-saving vaccines have been developed and approved to protect against viral infections including COVID-19 and influenza. Commercially available vaccines typically activate the production of antibodies against fragments […]
Cancer cells have a series of features that allow the immune system to identify and attack them. However, these same cells create an environment that blocks immune cells and protects the tumor. This means immune cells cannot reach the cancer cells to remove them. The scientific community has been working to increase the effectiveness of […]