Industry News/Research
Relevant published editorial on Inovio and DNA vaccines
DNA Vaccines: Precision tools for activating effective immunity against cancer
Nature Reviews Cancer
Rice, J., Ottensmeier, C., and Stevenson, F.
February 2008
Excerpts:
DNA vaccination has suddenly become a favored strategy for inducing immunity. The molecular precision offered by gene-based vaccines, together with the facility to include additional genes to direct and amplify immunity, has always been attractive. However, the apparent failure to translate operational success in preclinical models to the clinic, for reasons that are now rather obvious, reduced initial enthusiasm. Recently, novel delivery systems, especially electroporation, have overcome this translation block.
...for clinical trials of vaccines against cancer, initial enthusiasm turned to frustration with an apparent failure to translate promising vaccine designs from preclinical models into human subjects. The problem lay with delivery of DNA, and might now be solved by EP (electroporation), which is a known way of increasing transfection in vitro and is now successfully applied in vivo.
We have focused on electroporation (EP), for which there is a clear path to the clinic... The outcome is a dramatic enhancement of humoral and cellular immune responses....EP appears to have surmounted the hurdle required to translate DNA vaccination into the clinic, and multiple trials are in progress in infectious diseases and cancer.
The ability to manipulate genes has transformed medical science, and it is tempting to use the same knowledge and technology to develop gene-based vaccination. This goal has united experts in cancer with those in infectious disease who share the task of activating immunity against difficult targets....
...However, for clinical trials of vaccines against cancer, initial enthusiasm turned to frustration with an apparent failure to translate promising vaccine design from preclinical models into human subjects. The problem lay with delivery of DNA, and might now be solved by EP, which is a known way of increasing transfection in vitro and is now successfully applied in vivo...
For full article please click: DNA Vaccines: Precision tools for activating effective immunity against cancer
CANCER VACCINES
A Century in the Making…Almost Here?
Biotechnology Healthcare
Katherine Adams, Senior Editor
December 2007
“Cancer immunotherapeutics, including vaccines, may hit the market by the end of this decade. They promise longer survival and perhaps indefinite remission at a more favorable cost-benefit ratio than that of oncologics now in use. They also may fuel dramatic changes in how healthcare is delivered and financed.”
“Two streams of trend are coming together – one is the concept of personalized medicine, and the other is active immunotherapy, and we expect to see a significant clinical benefit as a consequence.”
Booster Shot
Forbes.com
Robert Langreth
November 2007
Excerpts:
A new golden age of vaccine is at hand, promising inoculations against malaria, meningitis, and much more.
The resurgence couldn't have come too soon. Mayo Clinic vaccine research Gregory Poland counts more than a dozen new diseases that have emerged in the last few decades: HIV, Lyme disease, West Nile Virus, avian influenza. The vaccine boom, he says, "is shaking up the market."
The $13 billion global vaccine business will grow 18% a year to $30 billon in 2011, predicts Lehman Brothers, well above the 4.4% annual growth expected for the drug industry overall.
For full article please click: Booster Shot
Vaccines and Their Promise are Roaring Back
The New York Times
Pascal Zachary
August 23, 2007
Excerpts:
But in a stunning reversal, innovators today are chasing dozens of vaccines, stimulated by some recent high-profile successes. "People see vaccines as money makers," says Paul A. Offit, chief of the infectious diseases section at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and the author of "Vaccinated," a new book on Hilleman's career.
"Vaccine makers ate tackling major public-health problems again," says Adel Mahmoud, a vaccine expert and a professor in the department of molecular biology at Princeton. "The size of the market is incredible, both in America and around the world." Dr. Mahmoud was previously president of Merck's vaccine unit.
To date the biggest winner on the revival is Merck, which in the first six months of 2007 posted revenue of nearly $2 billion from vaccines alone, more that the company's vaccine sales for all of 2006. As recently as 2005, Merck's vaccine sales totaled barely $1.1 billion and were essentially flat over the prior three years.
Across the industry, the research pipeline is bulging. Companies are spending billions trying to develop vaccines for various cancers, staph infections and malaria. "We are entering a new golden era of vaccinology," says Gregory A. Poland, a vaccine expert at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
"There are waves of optimism in medical science that encourage investment," Mr. Galambos says. "We're in one of those waves now."
The allure of the silver bullet — of wiping out an entire class of related diseases with a single injection — remains a powerful symbol of technological advance. Fifty years ago, vaccine creators captivated the world's imagination. With the return of vaccine-making to the center of the pharmaceutical business, new sources of profit are emerging, and new heroes of innovation.
For full article please click: Vaccines and Their Promise Are Roaring Back
The Business of Making Vaccines
Nature Biotechnology
Cormac Sheridan
November 2005
Excerpts:
Injectable DNA-based vaccines received a double boost this year when vaccines against infectious hematopoietic necrosis virus (IHNV) in farmed salmon and against the West Nile virus in horses gained approval in Canada and the United States, respectively.
Delivery of sufficient quantities of DNA to elicit strong immune response has been the biggest obstacle to progress. Several avenues are being explored.
Intramuscular electroporation is also gaining some ground...Chiron's Jeffrey Ulmer says it can increase the efficiency with which DNA is taken up by target cells by 100-fold, although the technology still have to prove itself in terms of safety, tolerability and practicability."
For full article please click here: The business of making vaccines
Vaccines that Keep Salmon Safe to Eat May Help Humans
Science Journal
Scott Hensley
September 2005
Excerpts:
Two DNA-based vaccines for animals have become the first to make it from the lab into commercial use, buoying hopes for similar vaccines for human diseases, such as Ebola, HIV/AIDS and SARS.
Enhancements in production and potency could make a DNA-based vaccine viable in human research. "We've gone from sic or seven years ago being bitterly disappointed by the low responses to expecting at this point that DNA vaccines will yield pretty good immune responses" in humans, says John Eldridge, vice president for vaccine discovery at Wyeth.
For full article please click: Vaccines That Keep Salmon Safe to Eat May Help Humans
DNA vaccines - back in the saddle again?
A promising new horse vaccine may reignite enthusiasm for DNA vaccine technology in designing prophylactics against infectious disease
Nature Biotechnology
Kendall Powell
July 2004
Excerpts:
"The ability to manipulate DNA vaccine antigens by recombinant means may also take them particularly suited to tackle some of the most vexing of infectious diseases that have resisted traditional drug treatment or conventional vaccination."
"Since DNA vaccines represent a fundamental technology that any sparsely equipped molecular biology laboratory could produce, most intellectual property (IP) rights in this arena involve the delivery method used to get plasmids into muscles, skin or other cells."
"Electroporation, in which a brief electrical charge causes pores to open on a cell's outer membrane, has proved promising in animal trials for delivering DNA plasmids. On May 24, Merck, in Whitehouse Station, New Jersey, licensed the technology from [Inovio] Biomedical in San Diego for use with two of its DNA vaccine antigens in return for an undisclosed upfront payment, milestones and future product royalties."
"A DNA vaccine is not magic. It is a tool to help you modify and optimize antigens in combination — that's the powerful part of DNA vaccines. Everyone who understands that will move forward," he says.
....DNA vaccines hold promise for protecting humans from some of our most ancient (malaria), tricky (HIV) and newly emerging (SARS) infectious enemies. As Harriet Robinson, a DNA vaccines veteran and chief of microbiology and immunology at the Emory University Vaccine Center in Atlanta, puts it: "It's really quite exciting to have a DNA vaccine approval within 12 years of people laughing at the first report of it."
For full article please click here: DNA vaccines–;back in the saddle again?
Rapid response vaccines – does DNA offer a solution?
Nature Biotechnology
Gareth M Forde
Volume 23, Number 9, September 2005
Excerpts:
"...plasmid DNA can be reverse engineered using recombinant techniques, and manufactured and purified quickly, allowing vaccine production in a much shorter time; indeed, production times could be reduced from up to nine months for conventional [influenza] vaccines to as little as one month for a DNA vaccine. Notwithstanding their production advantages, plasmid DNA vaccines also offer greater flexibility (as several antigens can be prepared using standard recombinant techniques), greater control over the immunization process, an excellent safety profile from animal and early phase human studies, and stability and resistance to extremes of temperature, thus facilitating storage, transportation and distribution to remote areas."
For full article please click here: Rapid response vaccines - does DNA offer a solution?
Preparing for an influenza pandemic
The Economist
September 22, 2005
This article states, "Many scientists now believe that another influenza pandemic is inevitable some time soon." Past pandemics have killed millions of people. The article focuses on the challenge of producing new vaccines in a timely manner and in sufficient volume to be able to immunize large masses of people, noting, "Vaccines are complicated to produce and prone to hit production problems."
For more information visit the Economist website
Advances in DNA vaccines
Nurse Practitioner
Jan 2002
Simmerman, James Mark
A useful introduction to the merits and potential of DNA vaccine technology, with the following observations:
"Immunization ranks among the most important health advances of the 20th century. With the exception of safe drinking water, vaccinology has more effectively reduced mortality than any other modality."
"Extraordinary advances in biotechnology make DNA vaccines the most promising area of vaccinology."
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3958/is_200201/ai_n9053796/pg_1
DNA Vaccines Promising New Technology Says Report
Doctor's Guide
December 2, 1997
Useful introduction to the merits and potential of DNA vaccine technology: