Empowered Patient Podcast Next-Generation Vaccines Breaking Immune Tolerance to Slow Progression or Prevent Onset of Chronic Conditions with Mei Mei Hu Vaxxinity
Mei Mei Hu, the CEO and Co-Founder of Vaxxinity, focuses on an approach to vaccines that aims to break immune tolerance to get the body to produce the antibodies to target self-antigens causing chronic conditions. Initial trials are being conducted to slow the progression or prevent the onset of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and hypercholesterolemia. Motivating this effort is the desire to democratize health and make transformative medicines available to a larger population at a lower cost.
Mei Mei explains, "Interestingly, in 1900, the average global life expectancy was 32. Today, when you hear someone died at 79, you're like, oh my gosh, what happened? We get these two bonus lifetimes now, and those three lives total for three main reasons. The first is the Green Revolution feeding us all. The second is hygienic plumbing, and the third is vaccines. But when we think of vaccines, they're usually crying babies or kids pre-COVID. What they did was able to banish the biggest diseases of our early lives."
"What we're looking to do now at Vaxxinity is do the same thing but for the diseases plaguing us in our second and third lives. That's why we go after things like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, hypercholesterolemia, which is a leading cause of heart disease. We're going after big population health things, and the best way to do them is with a vaccine approach."
"One of the main attributes of a vaccine is that it trains your body to attack pathogens or causes of disease. In our case, we're just teaching your body to produce drugs that help neutralize things like cholesterol, plaques, or CGRP, which is the culprit of migraines. That's what we mean when we talk about creating a vaccine for a chronic condition."
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