I believe he was confused and talking about COVID (confused w the European Marker in the press talking about COVID). MRKR has both a therapeutic and a vaccine but for oncology.
You ask what the facility is for? My best guess is so they aren’t beholden to 3rd parties that have caused such bad delays. However, that’s a WAG.
Both the old TPIV and new MRKR therapies are vaccines. They both use pieces of tumor protein as the antigen to immunize the immune cells.
For TPIV, they injected the tumor peptide vaccine into the patients, just like traditional vaccines for microbes and what-not.
MRKR therapies incubate the tumor peptides with Tcells and some dendritic cell that acts as an antigen presenting cell. So this is in vitro, but it's still a vaccine.
I would guess "operational" means they can produce patient T-cells, and/or peptide antigens. Maybe they'll make their own IL-2 or whatever the mysterious reagent is that the FDA put the hold on.
The out-dated clinical trials home page is maybe a good sign. They're too busy and forgot. But seriously we should all e-mail them a reminder. Maybe en masse we'll get their attention.
About the Ferrari, Magic 8-ball says, "Do DMT, Ask Entity."
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