Question

You have recently been promoted to the position of Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) at a medium-sized biotech company in Montgomery County, MD (an obvious advantage afforded you for taking this course). The focus of the company is the development of a recombinant protein-based poliovirus vaccine that is administered sublingually. You have been tasked with giving a talk to a group of venture capitalist in support of the company’s drive to secure funding for a phase 3 clinical trial. Below is a list of topics that you are to discuss during your talk. You have blocked off 2 hrs to write down details of what you plan to include during your time in front of the venture capitalists. ♣

Topic 7: Finally, there are already two successful polio vaccines and the WHO has targeted the next several years for worldwide eradication. Why should venture capitalist invest in your vaccine at this point in the overall picture? (Hint: You must convince them to invest…, your job and grade are largely dependent on their level of investment).

Answer 1

The recombinant proteins targets immune responses focuses against few protective antigens. Live recombinant bacteria or viral vectors stimulates the immune system as in natural infections and have intrinsic adjuvant properties.Recombinant vaccines depends on one or multiple defined antigens to induce immunity against the infections and allow the avoidance of several potential concerns raised by vaccines.Vaccines initially developed based on attenuation or inactivation of pathogens and researches in immunology, molecular biology, biochemistry, genomics, and proteomics have added new perspectives to the vaccinology field.

Recently, vaccines owe their success to their ability to target pathogens that have low antigenic variability and for which protection depends on antibody-mediated immunity. This is the case for polio, tetanus, diphtheria, measles, and hepatitis B, etc.As a consequence, vaccines capable of generating neutralizing or opsonizing antibodies against these pathogens were successful.Cell-mediated immunity against intracellular pathogens is much more difficult to obtain using current vaccine strategies.Efforts have been made towards the identification of protective antigens and the use of these antigens as vaccines goes beyond their discovery. The development of new improvised vaccines will require the combination of diverse strategies and use of novel biotechnological tools.

Even though vaccines based on recombinant proteins give several advantages but when compared with traditional vaccines, such as safety and production cost they present weak or poor immunogenicity alone and needs use of adjuvants for protective and long-lasting immune response.