In an initial step towards the development of a new vaccine to prevent tuberculosis, the Declaring war on the scourge of AIDS, EpiVax, a Rhode Island biotech firm and the TB/HIV Research Lab at Brown University announced the formation of a non-profit partnership to make a globally relevant AIDS vaccine available at little or no cost to recipients.

Dr. Anne De Groot, HIV physician and founder of the vaccine design firm, stated "it would be morally reprehensible to me and to my staff to make a profit from the vaccine we are developing to combat HIV." She and EpiVax CIO Bill Martin will be supporting the development of the EpiVax/ TB/HIV Research Lab HIV vaccine project through government and foundation grants and from profits earned from vaccine design contracts with large vaccine corporations. EpiVax is the past recipient of funding from the Rhode Island Center for Cellular Medicine (1998) and from the NIH (1999) for the initial development of the HIV vaccine. De Groot is also director of the TB/HIV Research Lab at Brown University, which recently won a $150,000 HIV vaccine Innovation Award from the NIH to support further development of the HIV vaccine. Acting as a focused research team, EpiVax and TB/HIV Research scientists will pursue the goal of bringing their HIV vaccine to clinical trials within the next five years.

Sequella Global Tuberculosis Foundation has named William R. Jacobs, Jr., Professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University and Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, , as one of 13 researchers to the Core Scientist Program of its Tuberculosis Vaccine Collaboration (TBVC) program. Acting as a focused research team, these core scientists will help to guide the Foundation as it supports new and innovative tuberculosis vaccine development. "What we are trying to do in the Core Scientist Program is to accelerate the transition of experimental vaccines from the research bench to the clinic. The three major areas addressed by this program are clinical trial site development, new tools for vaccine assessment in clinical trials, and research supporting the eventual clinical evaluation of candidate tuberculosis vaccines," says Carol Nacy, Ph.D., President of the Foundation. "Our goal is not just the research, but an actual vaccine." Jacobs

The EpiVax / TB/HIV Research Lab HIV vaccine concept is based on stringing together epitopes, or short fragments derived from HIV proteins, that train T cells, the body's primary immune defense against the virus, to respond to the threat of HIV infection. One of the key design elements of the EpiVax HIV vaccine has been the careful selection of epitopes representing HIV strains from all over the world. EpiVax, a leader in the field of "epitope-driven vaccine design" has applied its vaccine design tools EpiMatrix and Conservatrix to select, from a database of more than 30,000 HIV proteins, the best epitopes for the proposed HIV Vaccine. In studies carried out this year at the TB/HIV Research lab, T cells derived from healthy HIV infected individuals have been shown to respond to epitopes selected by EpiVax. A DNA vaccine containing these epitopes is now being evaluated in the laboratory.

De Groot and Martin reiterated one of their company's core values in making this announcement. "We do projects that have inherent human value." AIDS is decimating populations in countries that have no funds to pay for vaccines. Developing an HIV vaccine with the goal of distributing the vaccine at no cost is the only way to reach people who are most in need.

Response to vaccines is based on recognition of epitopes contained within those vaccines by the host (animal or human) immune system. Most vaccines contain a great deal of additional information that may not be necessary to achieve the desired result. Stripping vaccines down to the bare essentials, the epitopes, makes it possible to build and test vaccines faster, while also permitting researchers to "stuff" more vaccine information into the vaccines that they are building. EpiMatrix, a bioinformatics tool that identifies epitopes, the minimum amount of information necessary to turn on the immune system, was developed by De Groot at the TB/HIV Research lab, of Brown University and licensed to EpiVax, Inc. in August 1999.

has been selected along with Barry Bloom, Dean of the Harvard School of Public Health, for their proposal to develop live attenuated strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis for use in new vaccines. Currently, the only tuberculosis vaccine available is based on an attentuated strain of a related bacterium, Mycobacterium bovis. Although this vaccine does provide protection against severe and fatal forms of tuberculosis in children, its efficacy in adults is questionable. Their research within the Core Scientist Program will focus on genetic manipulation of the bacteria in order to create a strain of M. tuberculosis that does not cause disease and can be used as a vaccine.

Once thought to be under control and nearly eradicated in industrialized countries, tuberculosis continues to be a threat in all countries because of increasing drug resistance. It is estimated that nearly a third of the world's population, approximately 2 billion people, are infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterium that causes the disease. About 10% of these individuals will develop active tuberculosis disease within their lifetime. The antibiotics and the vaccine currently used to treat and prevent this disease are antiquated and have limited effectiveness.

The Core Scientists Program is the first step in the Foundation's TBVC, an international program designed to coordinate and facilitate the development of a vaccine. The scientists represent a variety of scientific, engineering and public health disciplines that are necessary to create a successful vaccine. Later this year the Foundation will begin accepting investigator-initiated grant applications in its Vaccine Innovation Program, designed to fund novel tuberculosis vaccine research.

Founded in 1997, the Sequella Global Tuberculosis Foundation is a non-profit organization devoted to providing resources, facilities and expertise to assist tuberculosis researchers across the world to move their discoveries in basic science through the laboratory, into the clinic and out to health care workers. It is funded by a number of corporate and philanthropic sources including a generous grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The TBVC core scientists are: Marcel A. Behr, MD, Assistant Professor, McGill University Health Centre, Montreal William Bishai, MD, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore Barry R. Bloom, Ph.D., Dean, Harvard School of Public Health Anne S. De Groot, MD, CEO, EpiVax, Inc., Providence, Rhode Island Wafaa El Sadr, MD, MPH, Professor of Clinical Medicine, Columbia University, New York William R. Jacobs, Jr., Ph.D., Professor, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York Gilla Kaplan, Ph.D., Associate Professor, The Rockefeller University, New York Douglas B. Lowrie, Ph.D., St. Georges Hospital, London John D. McKinney, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, The Rockefeller University, New York Boris V. Nikonenko, Ph.D., Sequella, Inc., Rockville, Maryland Erwin Schurr, Ph.D., Associate Professor, McGill University Center for Study of Host Resistance, Montreal David R. Sherman, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, University of Washington School of Public Health and Community Medicine, Seattle Zena Stein, M.A., MBBCh, Professor, Columbia University, New York