Biotech Values

[poorgradstudent]

Any comments on Bavarian Nordic

I've not really looked into this, so I don't have anything meaningful to add. I will note, however, that they're using additional methods to stimulate T cells. I think this highlights the difference in approach between companies who simply believe this pathway will take care of itself (a la rindo) versus companies that believe direct stimulation of this pathway is a necessary part of improving the success of immunotherapeutics (ipi, blinatimumab).

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Not to belabour the point, but I think one important point of all these vaccine immunotherapeutics against self antigens is to pay attention to the immune response related side effects (if any). Since we've not had much success with vaccine-type immunotherapeutics, new approaches will most likely show outright failure (we see little to no immunological adverse events coupled with little efficacy - theratope and various other vaccine immunotherapeutics) or a degree of success that goes hand in hand with a serious immunological adverse event profile (ipilimumab; remember TGN1412?).

I don't think we're at the point technologically where we can manage to break self-tolerance with these vaccination strategies while demonstrating zero immunological adverse events. In my opinion, anyone currently selling this utopian view is selling a vaccine strategy that doesn't work.