Empowered Patient Podcast Developing Vaccines with Multiple Components to Drive More Robust Response from Compromised Immune Systems with David Dodd GeoVax
David Dodd is Chairman, President, and CEO of GeoVax, which is working on vaccines that overcome restrictions of mRNA vaccines to provide longer-term, more robust protection, particularly for people who do not respond well to primary antibody stimulation. There is a strong response from T cells from this vaccine which can be stored in a non-refrigerated freeze-dried form allowing for greater access in more regions of the world.
David explains, "We are targeting those individuals who have compromised immune systems. This is a category of approximately 15 million individuals in the United States and almost 250 million worldwide, who, as a result of the conditions of their body or maybe even the therapies they may be on, or other conditions. Their body does not respond appropriately or well to the existing approved vaccines for COVID-19 or to the monoclonal antibodies. It's not that the other products have no value - it's that the individuals' bodies have been depleted of the ability to mount the proper response."
"We also include what is known as the nucleocapsid protein, which is highly conserved across viruses. It's always there, and it induces a very strong T cell response which drives memory in vaccines or in the human body from an immune standpoint. So, it is memory durability and also that it enables people whose bodies may have been depleted in order to mount an antibody response. They now can rely upon their T cells system or their cellular immune system to give them a protective element to reduce the severity, hospitalization, and risk of death."
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