GeneOne Life Science

Maslow, Joel

GeneOne has recently responded to two global pandemic threats: MERS-CoV and Zika. GeneOne brought the first entrants into the clinic for vaccines targeting both viral pathogens. The MERS vaccine study was brought forward into clinical trial 9 months from down-selection, a time to clinic that then was considered rapid and was not long after eclipsed by the speed of our Zika vaccine program, as already discussed. The first-in-man phase I studies of the MERS and Zika vaccines have been completed, and a second Zika vaccine trial in Puerto Rico that started in late summer of 2016 completed study visits in August 2018. Analysis of both the MERS and Zika vaccines showed that immune response was dose independent. For Zika, the passive transfer of serum to immunodeficient mice was protective regardless of the presence of neutralizing antibodies. The latter study was published in the NEJM (Tebas et al., N Engl J Med 2017; doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa1708120). GeneOne has continued its focus on emerging infectious diseases making significant progress on its SFTS vaccine. In the DNA-based therapeutics area, our research group demonstrated efficacy of DNA expressed anti-Her2 monoclonal antibody in a xenograft mouse model of human breast cancer – confirming the utility of this platform.