Archived Content
Seventh Annual
NOVEL VACCINES
August 13-15, 2012
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WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 15
8:00 am Conference Registration and Morning Coffee
8:50 Chairperson’s Opening Remarks
William J. Egan, Ph.D., Senior Technical Expert, Novartis Vaccines & Diagnostics, Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research, Inc.
» Keynote Presentation:
9:00 Systems Vaccinology: Enabling Rational Vaccine Design with Systems Biology
 Bali Pulendran, Ph.D., Professor, Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Emory University School of Medicine - Biography
Despite their great success, we understand little about how effective vaccines stimulate protective immune responses. Two recent developments promise to yield such understanding: the appreciation of the crucial role of the innate immune system in sensing microorganisms and tuning immune responses, and advances in systems biology. In this presentation, I will discuss how these developments are yielding insights into the mechanism of some of the most successful vaccines ever developed. Furthermore, such developments promise to address a major challenge in vaccinology: that the efficacy of a vaccine can only be ascertained retrospectively, upon infection. We have recently used a systems biology approach to identify early gene signatures that correlate with, and predict the later immune responses in humans vaccinated with the live attenuated yellow fever vaccine YF-17D, or with the influenza vaccines. I will review these studies, and discuss their broader implications for vaccinology.
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9:40 Vaccinomics: The Role of Immunogenetics in Vaccine Development
Inna G. Ovsyannikova, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Medicine, Mayo Vaccine Research Group, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine - Biography
Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in a field of vaccinology that was named vaccinomics. The overall idea behind vaccinomics is to identify genetic and other mechanisms and pathways that determine immune responses, and thereby provide novel candidate vaccine approaches. Considerable data demonstrate that host genetic polymorphisms act as important determinants of innate and adaptive immunity to vaccines. This talk highlights examples of the role of immunogenetics in understanding immune responses to vaccination, which are highly variable across the population. The influence of HLA genes, non-HLA genes in inter-individual variations in immune responses to viral vaccines are examined using population-based gene/SNP association studies. The ability to understand relationships between immune response gene variants and vaccine-specific immunity may assist in designing new vaccines.
10:15 Reverse Vaccinology: An Evolving Approach in Vaccine Discovery and Development
Fabio Bagnoli, Ph.D., Project Leader, Novartis Vaccines & Diagnostics - Biography
Vaccine research and development are experiencing a renaissance of interest from the global scientific community. There are three major reasons for this: (1) the lack of efficacious treatment for many devastating infections; (2) the emergence of multidrug resistant bacteria, and (3) the great promise for innovative vaccine design and research with convergence of genomics, proteomics, immunomics, and more recently, structural biology and systems biology. Our first project based on genomics was initiated in 2000 and was termed reverse vaccinology. At that time, antigen identification was mainly based on bioinformatic analysis of a singular genome. The first reverse vaccinology-derived vaccine is now in late-stage clinical trials and several novel vaccine candidates are in preclinical studies. In the meantime, vaccine discovery and development has been further improved with the support of proteomics, functional genomics, comparative genomics, structural biology and systems biology. Furthermore, high-throughput sequencing techniques, unlimited computing resources, as well as new bioinformatics algorithms are now changing the way we perform genomic studies.
Vaccines have enormously contributed to improving health and increasing longevity of human beings. However, infectious diseases are still among the leading cause of death and morbidity worldwide. One of the main factors associated with this unpleasant scenario is the emergence of multi-drug resistant bacteria for which no vaccines are available, such as Staphylococcus aureus. In order to identify an efficacious vaccine against this complex pathogen, we have used a manifold antigen selection approach which has led to the identification of a tetravalent combination highly protective in animal models of staphylococcal infection.
10:45 Coffee Break with Poster and Exhibit Viewing
11:30 Panel Discussion: Vaccinomics: Technologies to Advance Vaccine Development
Moderated by:
William M. Egan, Ph.D., Senior Technical Expert, Novartis Vaccines & Diagnostics, Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research, Inc.
Panelists:
Bali Pulendran, Ph.D., Professor, Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Emory University School of Medicine
Inna G. Ovsyannikova, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Medicine, Mayo Vaccine Research Group, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine
Fabio Bagnoli, Ph.D., Project Leader, Novartis Vaccines & Diagnostics
12:15pm End of Novel Vaccines. Enjoy Lunch on Your Own
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