Daily Lobo new mexico
wednesday October 29, 2014 | Volume 119 | Issue 51
The Independent Student Voice of UNM since 1895
Researchers find alternative in vaccine creation By Lauren Topper
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Sergio Jiménez / Daily Lobo / @SXfoto
Kathryn Frietze, post doctoral fellow in molecular genetics microbiology, pipettes vaccine candidates in a laboratory on Tuesday. Researchers at UNM led by Health Sciences Center have developed a new strategy for the creation of vaccines that use virus-like particles, which can be attached to molecules that the body wouldn’t normally identify as a threat.
Typical Vaccine
Infection with typical vaccine vs. vlp system
VLP system
A team of researchers at UNM has developed a new strategy for the creation of vaccines with near limitless applications, from malaria and cancer to high cholesterol. The project is spearheaded by Health Sciences Center professor Dr. David Peabody and assistant professor Dr. Bryce Chackerian. Typically, vaccinations involve injecting someone with a harmless version of the virus, teaching their body to recognize and quickly destroy that virus. Instead, this new strategy employs proteins that simply look like a virus, termed virus-like particles, which can be attached to molecules that the body wouldn’t normally identify as a threat. Using this system, Chackerian said the research team believes it can teach the body’s immune system to attack almost anything. “The immune system responds really strongly to (VLPs). And so basically our idea is to develop vaccines where we take a target that’s normally poorly immunogenic and we display them in a more immunogenic context – on the surface of a virus-like particle,” Chackerian said. Many viruses are difficult to vaccinate against because they can mutate — like the flu, which has a different “version” of itself each year, making it hard for the body to identify, he said. Yet this technique can target parts of the virus that are consistently kept the same, but which the body doesn’t typically recognize. Think of a mutating virus as a person who wears a different mask every day — if someone is trained to recognize that person by their face, they will not be able to identify them. However, if he or she learns to recognize them by their body, they can figure out who it is regardless of what their face looks like. “What we’re trying to do is develop vaccines against targets that are particularly hard to develop vaccines using more traditional, conventional methods,” Chackerian said. “We basically try to look for the Achilles heels of different pathogens.” The group has established a massive library of VLPs attached
Immune system recognizes a portion of the virus (Green) and creates antibodies to attack it. Antibody
Infection with a live virus
Infection with a mutated version
Immune system recognizes the virus (Green) and creates antibodies to attack it.
Immune system does not recognize the virus and subject becomes sick
Immune system remembers red portion of virus and attacks it
Red portion of virus does not mutate. Immune system still recognizes virus and attacks it.
Dead virus
Red portion of virus is attached to VLP. Immune system attacks VLP and the attached virus segment.
VLP - looks like a virus but isn’t
Vaccine page 2
Grant allows Cancer Center to reach rural patients By Sayyed Shah
Teresa Stewart, executive director of the New Mexico Cancer Care Alliance
The UNM Cancer Center has received a $7 million grant from the National Cancer Institute’s National Community Oncology Research Program to expand the clinical trials network in New Mexico. As the parent institution for the NCORP grant, UNM Cancer Center will work closely with the New Mexico Cancer Care Alliance, the statewide health care partnership for cancer clinical trials, according to a press release issued by UNM Cancer Center. “We serve all New Mexicans and this NCORP grant will help us
reach more of our rural and underserved population,” said Cheryl L. Willman, director and CEO of the cancer center. The grant will provide funding for the staff to help patients and physicians participate in the clinical trials sponsored by the NCI, said Teresa Stewart, director of the Clinical Research Office at the UNM Cancer Center and the executive director of the New Mexico Cancer Care Alliance. “While UNM Cancer Center has been awarded the grant, we have to work with our community — and our community for this grant is the entire state of New Mexico.
We are working collaboratively with a statewide not-for-profit cancer research network called the New Mexico Cancer Care Alliance,” Stewart said. New Mexico Cancer Care Alliance was created to remove barriers to opening cancer clinical trails and centralize all those functions so the hospitals can be more efficient in the state of New Mexico, she said. UNM Cancer Center has involved 40-50 oncologists and 48-50 research staff from all over the state in the project, she said. “Each year we have to enroll around 215 patients in our state on
these specific clinical trials,” she said. “It will help because patients who are on a clinical trial are being offered if they want access to new drugs that they would not have access to otherwise as part of their treatment.” When patients are on clinical trials not only do they have a physician and nurses who usually are providing them care but there is a research nurse or a research coordinator who has to make sure everything has been done according to the protocol, she said. “We have to document that for the sponsor of the trial,” Stewart
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Cancer page 2