What are the advantages of DNA viral vaccines over non-DNA viral vaccines?
GN. DNA vaccines are not viruses, they’re synthetic pieces – pieces of DNA grown in a plasmid – and so they are easy to grow. But they don’t have any of the natural targeting mechanisms that viral vectors would have. Viral vectors, if you chose the right one, can target you more effectively to the right cells to stimulate an immune response. But they carry some extra baggage with them: they carry proteins on their surface that can also be the targets of the immune system. And so it’s possible particularly in the case of adenoviruses that pre-existing immune responses against related viruses could diminish the efficacy of those vectors. That’s not been a showstopper for us, but it’s been something that we’ve been concerned about. NGP. How will the pharmaceutical industry benefit from your research efforts? GN. The pharmaceutical industry is very important in this whole process because ultimately, to distribute a vaccine on a mass scale to people who need it, we need their manufacturing
