Developing new immunisation platforms

Keywords: immunisation, vaccine, biotechnology, COVID-19

We have developed specific immunisation platforms that enable the development of highly effective, targeted vaccines. With this new approach, we can use extremely short, yet highly relevant pathogen stages for vaccine development. With such short protein fragments, it has been impossible to elicit an adequate immune response, so the immune response generated by new vaccines can be much more specific and therefore more effective. Our experiments to date have demonstrated that 9-24 amino acid virus antigenic segments linked to the new platforms induce a sufficient epitope-specific, selective immune response in experimental animals. The level of immunoglobulin titre produced against the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein and the efficacy of the virus neutralising antibodies are comparable to those of immunoglobulins produced in the blood of animals vaccinated with the mRNA-based COVID vaccine. The key competitive advantages of the newly developed vaccine candidates are summarised below:

1. a targeted immune response can be achieved by containing only information related to the relevant virus sequences, i.e. it provides a more efficient means of virus neutralisation and T-cell immune response, memory cell generation.

2. Significantly enhanced combinability (Mosaic vaccine), vaccination platforms with different viral epitopes can be individually assembled into a single polymeric surface, i.e. it can provide protection against multiple mutations simultaneously.

3. Widely modulatable: the TFR123 platform can be converted into both peptide and liposome vaccines, as well as DNA vector and mRNA vaccines.

4. The platforms can open the possibility of transforming tumour cells that are hiding from the immune system into immunoreactive, immunogenic cells, thus providing the basis for personalised tumour immunotherapy.

Applicability

The new immunisation platforms can be effective in protecting against new and established pathogens, as well as providing a real alternative to fight cancer lesions.