Love your Community
It is important to keep goals in mind despite the chaos. We are imagining peace and sending out love to the citizens of countries impacted by conflict this month. EpiVax is promoting love locally and globally by doubling down on our commitment to charitable giving.
See this link for our update on giving for 2021. As far as we can tell, we donate a larger proportion of our annual profit than some other highly profitable companies….I’m looking at you Moderna and Pfizer! This #VaxGivesBack initiative is an employee-led effort. I’m also grateful that EpiVax supports two organizations I founded, Clínica Esperanza/Hope Clinic and GAIA Vaccine Foundation. EpiVax will now be partnering with the Rhode Island Foundation, to help us direct donations to local organizations throughout the year.
T Time!
Last month I wrote about the importance of generating a robust T cell response in SARS-CoV-2 vaccination. Apparently, the New York Times agrees! This is good news for our EPV-CoV19 vaccine: even though Omicron (and likely future variants) can evade the initial antibody response, existing and current vaccines that drive T cell response will offer protection against serious illness, hospitalization, and death for months/possibly years. EpiVax has a vaccine for that!
Stealthier Cancers after CPI
Using the ANCER platform for deciphering cancer mutanomes, the EpiVax Therapeutics team made some startling discoveries about changes to the cancer mutanome after checkpoint inhibitor therapy. Lead Computational Immunologist Guilhem Richard presented his data at the 2021 SITC conference.
In short, tumors try to avoid immune detection in response to checkpoint inhibitor therapies. Sequences from tumor biopsies after checkpoint inhibitor therapy exhibit increased “immune camouflage” with more “human-like” mutations. We are expanding the study in a collaboration with NYU.
Here is Guilhem’s poster from SITC!
Also, I will be at the Gordon Research Conference in March talking about personalized vaccines for non-cancer indications: “Why Not Develop Personalized Vaccines for the Next Pandemic? Yes, We Can.”
Episode #2: Flaming Eggplants!
Thank you everyone that tuned into the first Episode of Recipes for Success!
We got the gang back together in January for another session focused on the challenges around maternity leave for women in the biotech industry. Special thanks to Jen Calderini from Pfizer, who talked about her experience with maternity leave, as well as the challenges of pandemic parenting.
And of course, I can’t forget our chef du jour, Vibha Jawa from BMS! Vibha prepared lentil dahl and flame-roast eggplant. YUM! And don’t miss the cameos from Vibha’s daughter Mahika and friend Lily!
Festival of Biologics
San Diego? In March? Yes, please!
My compatriots Brian Roberts, David Dodge and Sarah Moniz will be representing EpiVax at Festival of Biologics, and we have several talks and posters!
Brian will be presenting on HCP immunogenicity… which is certainly a hot topic right now. Anyone catch the PLBL2 story?
Our ISPRI-HCP toolkit is perfect for addressing this late-stage immunogenicity risk, and Brian will share our latest.
Vaccine Industry Excellence Awards
EpiVax is up for a VIE award in the category of “Best New Vaccine Technology/platform” for our JanusMatrix Algorithm. Have you voted yet? Here’s the link!
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