Empowered Patient Podcast Developing Multi-Antigen Vaccines for Immunocompromised Patients with David Dodd GeoVax
David Dodd, CEO of GeoVax, highlights the need for next-generation vaccines, specifically multi-antigen and T cell-focused technologies, to provide better protection for immunocompromised populations. Their pipeline includes a COVID-19 vaccine candidate, an Mpox/Smallpox vaccine, and a gene therapy for solid tumors. A priority for GeoVax is to develop new manufacturing processes to significantly accelerate vaccine production, increase yield, and reduce costs.
David explains, "Multi-antigen vaccines become critically important, especially for populations for whom the existing approach in vaccines, meaning single-antigen vaccines or antibody-focused or antibody-only vaccines, is inadequate. And to clarify that, there are approximately 40 million adults in the United States, about 10 times that number worldwide, who suffer from various medical conditions, such as blood cancers. They may have renal disease, diabetes, or be HIV positive. They may also have weakened immune systems, they could have multiple sclerosis or lupus. So there are a host of medical conditions that the result is they inhibit or they deplete an individual's immune system from mounting an adequate antibody response. And keep in mind, the antibody system is that first line of defense when an infectious threat occurs. And that's sort of like the frontline soldiers. They throw up a protective guard to respond to that."
"That means for those individuals, what we need to do is also address this, as we develop vaccines, and some technologies allow you to do this. The majority of vaccine platforms do not, unfortunately. And that is to also induce a very strong cellular immunity or T cells. And this becomes critically important because T cells are what clear a virus from the body. It's also what drives what is known as memory, and also gives breadth or robustness of protection. So it becomes critically important that if one has the opportunity because of their technology or the platform they're utilizing to enlist and engage both the antibody as well as the cellular side, then one can generally develop a much more robust protective immune response that will reduce the risk of severe infection, hospitalization, and the risk of death against certain infections."
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