Vaccine and Immunotherapy Technologies

9-11 April 2008, Canberra

Associate Professor David Sinclair

Director, Paul F Glenn Laboratories for the Biological Mechanisms of Aging, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA

David Sinclair received his undergraduate degree and PhD in molecular genetics from the University of New South Wales in Sydney. During his postdoctoral research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he discovered a cause of aging for yeast and genes that control the aging process, and was recruited to Harvard Medical School in 1999. In 2004 he co-founded Sirtris Pharmaceuticals to treat age-associated diseases such as diabetes, neurodegenerative diseases and cancer. Two years later, he co-founded Genocea Biosciences, a vaccine discovery and development company, to prevent and treat infectious diseases in developed and developing countries. He plays an active role at both companies as a director and advisor. As well as having received a number of prestigious awards in the US and in Australia, David is currently a senior fellow of the Ellison Medical Foundation.

 

Accelerating vaccine discovery for multiple pathogens using ORFeome screening technologies

[Transcript of presentation not available]

Effective vaccine strategies for intracellular pathogens often require the identification and in vivo delivery of pathogen-derived antigens to antigen presenting cells (APC) via immunisation. Relatively few advances have been made in developing strategies to rapidly identify pathogen-specific T cell antigens that can be incorporated into subcomponent vaccine formulations. Therefore, the development of strategies to identify pathogen-specific CD8+ and CD4+ T cell antigens is of fundamental importance in the rational design of vaccines against numerous pathogens.

Genocea Biosciences is using technology that allows for the efficient in vitro expression and targeting of the entire protein complement of an infectious disease pathogen to host APC for the generation of T cell responses. The technology can rapidly identify which T cell antigens out of all possible candidates from a disease target best stimulate the immune system following immunisation. Which antigen cocktail will prove most effective either as a prophylactic or a therapeutic vaccine can be predicted. An update on Genocea's programs will be presented, including the application of the technology to Chlamydia trachomatis, the leading cause of bacterial sexually transmitted disease worldwide.

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