![]() Lewis's team, is the Fusogenix delivery platform. This is where nanotechnology comes in-which, for Dr. That paint-by-numbers poster is created by using snippets of DNA for fragments of the target pathogen (hence the "DNA vaccine" moniker), but it only works if it can be delivered in a way that the cells can accept, read, and act on. The key to this type of vaccine is finding a way to deliver the DNA directly into host cells successfully. Using those replicas to warn the body about a potential intruder is, like traditional vaccines, an effective way to build its defenses. Instead of receiving the actual piece of pathogen to wave around, the cells that receive the paint-by-numbers poster will fill in the details to create harmless replicas of those pathogen pieces on their own. Lewis's team is working on a brand new approach-called a DNA vaccine-that is more like giving a sophisticated "paint-by-numbers" version of that wanted poster directly to our cells. The vaccine will actually contain that harmless bit of pathogen, which the immune system can then wave around as a warning. With traditional vaccines, this effect is typically created by using a piece of the target pathogen (or the whole thing in a deactivated form) to act as that wanted poster/cheat sheet. The poster, however, is also like a "cheat sheet" that tells the body how to prepare very specific equipment to use on the intruder if it arrives. The benefit of vaccination in general is that the process triggers an immune response without causing disease: the vaccine essentially serves as a "wanted poster" that primes the immune system to be on the lookout for the potential intruder (pathogen). "It has been full steam ahead ever since."įor months now, our collective hopes have been pinned to the development of a successful vaccine as our best chance to get the global pandemic under control. "We already knew that our drug delivery platform would work for vaccine development, so we made the decision to lean in and focus on COVID-19," he says. Lewis and his team felt the call of duty to expand their work. Lewis, a professor in the Department of Experimental Oncology at the University of Alberta, was busy establishing partnerships to support this interest in Fusogenix and expanding his own research program on cancer metastasis when the COVID-19 pandemic arrived and upended all of our lives. The platform, known as Fusogenix, uses cutting-edge nanotechnology to bring targeted medicines directly to specific cells in the body-a process that has the potential to generate new and better ways of treating cancer and other chronic diseases.ĭr. John Lewis had different plans for 2020.īy the end of 2019, his biotechnology company, Entos Pharmaceuticals, was generating a lot of buzz for its proprietary drug delivery platform.
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