Cranbury-based firm’s work could yield malaria vaccine
By: Lauren Otis
CRANBURY Malaria is considered a scourge of the world, but for many Americans the threat of the disease transported by mosquitoes in tropical and subtropical regions seems removed from their daily lives. That is unless they serve in the U.S. military.
Six of the last seven U.S. troop deployments were to malarial regions Bosnia being the lone exception and in the heat of a battle zone American servicemen often forgo the unpleasant drugs that currently only partially guard against the disease, resulting in many bringing the chronic disease home with them.
The solution to this problem for the U.S. military, and for the world, may reside in a nondescript research park off Route 130 in Cranbury, headquarters of VaxInnate, a privately-held biotechnology company of 41 employees which is developing vaccines for malaria, as well as pandemic and seasonal influenza.
The company’s malaria vaccine research is promising enough that it will now be collaborating with the Defense Department on a practical vaccine thanks in large part to the efforts of U.S. Rep. Rush Holt (D-12), who secured $1 million for VaxInnate in the 2007 Defense Appropriations Act to support its research and development of a malaria vaccine.
In recognition of this development, Rep. Holt paid a visit to VaxInnate headquarters recently.
"It should be apparent to everyone that we need different approaches to vaccines for malaria, for influenza and for things we don’t even know about yet. So I want to do everything I can to encourage research that should have been done 10, 15 years ago, and I’m glad you are doing that," Rep. Holt said to a gathering of VaxInnate employees.
Since at least the 1960s researchers have been trying to create an effective malarial vaccine, said Alan Shaw, VaxInnate’s president and chief executive officer. Part of the problem is the transformative nature of pathogens like malaria their ability to live in the human bloodstream and disguise themselves, evading the immune system and thwarting vaccines, said Mr. Shaw, whose background includes 15 years at Merck in vaccine development.
"Using the technology we’ve developed here, I’m fairly confident we can fix that," Mr. Shaw said.
The key to VaxInnate’s technology is in linking a natural component of microbes, known as flagellin, to vaccine antigens, enabling the human immune system to recognize the vaccine as foreign and develop a strong immune response, Mr. Shaw explained. VaxInnate utilizes stable antigens that have stayed the same as other parts of malaria or influenza have mutated, and produces its vaccines in bacteria, using recombinant DNA techniques, as opposed to traditional methods of growing vaccines in chicken eggs or cell-based mediums, according to Mr. Shaw.
Ideally, not only is the VaxInnate technology able to produce an effective vaccine, but "we can make a lot of this stuff, and we can make it fast, and we can store it," Mr. Shaw said.
Lest this sound easier to do than it really is, Mr. Shaw noted: "One of the truisms of vaccines is making it is 15 percent of the work. The other 85 percent is analyzing what you put into the vaccine. Making the stuff is relatively straightforward, but figuring out what is in it, what you’ve made, and making it over and over is the tough part."
Mr. Shaw said much still needs to be done in VaxInnate’s influenza and malaria vaccine work, including effectiveness studies and human clinical trials, with data from such trials not likely to be coming earlier than in 2008, "and that’s fast for this kind of business."
Mr. Shaw appeared anything but daunted, however. His enthusiasm, and his staff of researchers’ too, was palpable, fueled by the prospect of resolving at least a few of the medical world’s most sought after disease problems developing effective influenza and malaria vaccines all from a base in central New Jersey.
"We are happy to be here," Mr. Shaw said.

