A week where Providence became a hub of scientific discovery and commercialization
By Richard Asinof
PROVIDENCE – The seventh annual Vaccine Renaissance Conference brought together many of the nation’s leading scientific experts on vaccine research on Oct. 16-18. The conference, hosted by iCubed, the Institute for Immunology and Informatics at the University of Rhode Island, was a scientific gathering grounded in the culture of collaboration and the serious exchange of ideas.
As the introduction to the conference urged attendees: “Please take every opportunity to ask questions, interact with each other, and share your work. We hope that you will succeed in creating new networks of collaboration.”
The topics addressed at the opening session on Thursday morning, Oct. 17, captured the breadth of scientific expertise. Dr. Phillip K. Russell, founding president of The Albert B. Sabin Vaccine Institute, and a retired Major General who served in the in the U.S. Army Medical Corps for three decades, gave a 30-minute talk criticizing the current lack of preparedness by the U.S. government to develop countermeasures against bioterrorism.
It was the same message that Russell had delivered six days earlier in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee Subcommittee on Intelligence, Emerging Threats and Capabilities, when he said: “The threat that a biologic attack by terrorists or other adversaries poses to our armed forces or our nation is not fully understood or recognized by the leadership of our defense programs. Second[ly], the countermeasure development programs of the Department of Defense essential to protecting our armed forces and our nation have a long, very well-documented record of failure and will continue to fail if not corrective actions are taken.”
As Russell told ConvergenceRI before his talk, the reasons why the programs are not performing include: the difficulty of the science, the cumbersome contracting methods, the lack of good leadership at the White House, and the failure to embrace new technology to enhance biodefense medical counter measures.
The importance of the conference, he continued, “is that vaccines on demand are creating an opportunity to change the strategies moving forward/ One hopes that the funding agencies will recognize the value of the advancing technologies and put them into the program so that we can enhance our capabilities.”
Russell said that the reason he was attending the conference was because it provided an opportunity “to learn what the new vaccine science and technologies offer to develop the countermeasures that we need.”
Russell was followed by Alan Barrett, director of the Study for Vaccine Development at the University of Texas Medical Branch, who discussed in a rapid-fire presentation the genomic analysis comparing the live attenuated yellow fever vaccine 17D-204 to its virulent parental strain Asibi by deep sequencing.
In turn, Barrett was followed to the podium by Kate Broderick, director of R&D at Inovio, one of the sponsors of the conference, who described her company’s explorations of targeting dermal tissue to deliver DNA biologics and vaccines.
At the end of each session, participants, almost all of whom had laptops and mobile devices to capture details, engaged in a question-and-answer dialogue that probed the scientific design of the work begin done.
A new, better, more efficient flu vaccine
Manon M.J. Cox, president and CEO of Protein Sciences Corporation in Meriden, Conn. Her company has developed an FDA-approved influenza vaccine manufacturing process using the company’s proprietary protein expression technology that can produce high quality recombinant proteins, quickly, reliably and at a low cost.
Cox, who is originally from the Netherlands, has been a regular participant at the Vaccine Renaissance Conference. This year, her company is a sponsor, and she has brought with her a number of the company’s top scientists, she told ConvergenceRI, because “it’s important to have these meetings where scientists have an opportunity to share ideas by talking with one another so we can come up with better solutions.” And, she continued, “I brought a couple of scientists with me because I think it’s important for them to participate.”
Cox praised the work of iCubed as a very exciting institute and the efforts of Dr. Anne S. De Groot, CEO of EpiVax, Inc., and director of iCubed.
Noting that Rhode Island was a small state sandwiched by Boston on one side, with its ability to attract a lot of scientists and pay relatively high salaries, and by New York on the other side, Cox saw the potential of developing a New England consortium between Rhode Island and Connecticut. “This little conference here may be very important to that,” she said. “It’s right in the middle, very close to Boston, close to Connecticut, we need to expand that reach to get New York involved. We might be able to make things happen.”
Cox described her company’s work in developing an FDA-approved flu vaccine using recombinant proteins with a certain level of frustration.
“This concept was known for the last 40 years. For the last 30 years we have had the technology to make the vaccines. And it took 20 years to convince the FDA that this vaccine was safe and effective,” she said.
At the same time, Cox continued, 95 percent of the influenza virus vaccines are still grown using a 60-year-old technology, using chicken eggs.
Today, there are still only three FDA-approved recombinant vaccines, according to Cox.
The Hepatitis B vaccine, which will ultimately prevent liver cancers, costs about $400 a dose.
The second is the human papillomavirus, or HPV vaccine, associated with the prevention of cervical cancer, that Cox said was still a very expensive vaccine, costing about $300 a dose.
The third is her company’s influenza vaccine.
“People are used to getting the flu vaccines for $10 or $20. When we came out with our product and we priced it at $32, there was resistance,” Cox said. “As we are scaling up our production, we hope to bring that price down dramatically. My personal goal is to have nations that can afford to pay a little more for vaccines pay that amount, so the vaccine will be available in developing countries.”
Commercialization of technology
Two days before, just three blocks away, another important conference was held in Providence, a Rhode Island health care showcase hosted by Brown University’s Technology Ventures Office.
The goal of the showcase was to “accelerate commercialization and innovation, align regional health care expertise and strengthen the translational bridge that will bring research and discovery to the marketplace.”
The showcase also sought to “heighten awareness” of Rhode Island’s Knowledge District.
An overflow crowd of more than 300 people attended at various times over the seven-hour event at the Warren Alpert Medical School, which featured three panel discussions focused on future health challenges: aging populations and aging brains, the future of genomics in medicine, and treatment of disease using nutritional strategies.
Gov. Lincoln D. Chafee welcomed the gathering, followed by Brown University Provost Dr. Mark Schlissel.
The keynote speaker was John L. Brooks III, president and CEO of the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, who has founded four different life sciences companies. Brook discussed the disruptive forces at play in the health care sector.
“The days that you see your doctor four times a year are over,” Brooks predicted, saying that the use of health IT, the development of virtual apps and portals will change the dynamics of how patients are “treated” in the future.
Among the attendees was: Douglas E. Denninger, an intellectual property lawyer who specializes in patents, trademarks and copyrights; Barbara R. Schoenfeld, director, and Kevin Centrofanti, senior managing director, at the investment banking firm of Brooks, Houghton & Company, Inc., in New York City; Kenneth Levy, senior vice president of Special Projects at Johnson & Wales University; Richard G. Horan of the Slater Technology Fund; Virginia M. Burke, president and CEO of the Rhode Island Health Care Association; Erik Wernevi, founder and president of the Nordic Technology Group, a startup firm in developing new technology in the aging population sector; and Stephen Lane, co-founder, chairman and chief venture office of Ximedica, who moderated the panel discussion on medical nutrition.
In advance of the panel discussions, some of the participants met in pre-wired meetings to discuss commercialization opportunities, coordinated by Katie Gordon of the Brown Technology Ventures program.
Unlike the Vaccine Renaissance Conference, the health care showcase had a sense of experts talking at, not with, the participants, and dialogue was often limited to a few questions at the end of each session,
That was the week that was
Between the health care showcase on Oct. 15, the Vaccine Renaissance conference from Oct. 16-18, and the Startup Weekend Providence, hosted by BetaSpring, from Oct. 18-20, Rhode Island’s innovation ecosystem was fully engaged in high-yield conversations.
What appeared to be missing, however, was a sense of connection and convergence between the three important events – as well as news coverage of the two major conferences – except here in ConvergenceRI.
