We look forward to hosting you soon at the NASW conference.
We start our day at the Novartis Vaccines Holly Springs facility. Following check-in and registration, we’ll have brief presentations by two of the local Novartis scientists/executives. This includes a welcome from the site leadership and an overview of the HHS and BARDA contracts for Novartis’ cell culture system.
The group will then split into tours of about 10 each. There is be no need for special gowning since the tour will stay in the aisles where visitors can see production activity through the glass walls.
After lunch we’ll visit NCSU’s Centennial Campus and to Agile Sciences. The company’s proprietary Agilyte molecules break up the slimy colonies of microbes called biofilms, a hot field of research right now.
NCSU researchers Drs. John Cavanagh and Christian Melander, Agile’s co-founders, were inspired to create the Agilyte molecules by sea sponges that produce a natural dispersant that breaks down communication channels among bacteria. “So they can’t sense each other or, indeed, the outside world. That makes them weak and vulnerable,” explained Cavanagh, who will join us at Agile for this visit.
Synthesizing this nifty quality of sea sponges, Agile is able to baffle bacteria so they can’t figure out how to find safety in numbers. Thus, they become exposed and vulnerable to antimicrobials. In medicine, Agile is developing Agilyte molecules as an adjuvant antibiotic therapy to treat drug-resistant bacterial diseases, such as MRSA. In agriculture, Agilyte molecules are being developed to enhance fungicidal treatments for crop disease outbreaks. In industry, Agilyte molecules are being developed to clean membranes clogged by biofouling.
The second visit will be at Arbovax. The Biotech Center helped to bootstrap Arbovax with a series of loans totaling more than $540K during the past six years. Its platform technology is being developed as a Dengue vaccine, though it also holds promise for dealing with West Nile. That’s especially timely because 2012 has seen the worst outbreak of West Nile in the U.S. since 2003. There have been reports of the virus in 47 states, with Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, South Dakota and Oklahoma the worst hit. More than 1,900 cases have been reported.
Arbovax President and CEO Malcolm Thomas, who will spend the hour with us during the visit, points out that the company’s technology can potentially address not only Dengue and West Nile, but virtually all the 200-plus arthropod-borne viral diseases that affect man. Thomas says Arbovax is capable of rapidly initiating a West Nile vaccine program if it can find a suitable partner/funding agency. He’s busy working on that, of course.
He points out that West Nile is fundamentally simpler than Dengue (it has only one serotype compared to four for Dengue). So any Arbovax work on West Nile could progress more quickly (though they’ve successfully completed Dengue primate trials and are gearing up for the first human trials to start in about nine months). As global climate change seems to favor the spread of many of the arthropod-borne diseases, the effective vaccines becomes all the more important.
North Carolina Biotechnology Center [Type text]October 22, 2012