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A universal sentinel Telethon Kids researchers are looking beyond magic bullets and aiming for long-term benefits for our most vulnerable.
Jan Hallam reports.
Before the SARS COV2 pandemic, vaccine research and development were studied and measured affairs. Underpinning them were two words – safe and effective. While there are grim health imperatives driving many of the vaccine projects around the world, the vaccine ‘race’ itself has entered a particularly worrying political stage with the availability of a Russian vaccine that many scientists consider is undercooked, and governments of wealthy nations speculating billions of dollars on promising vaccine candidates. The stakes are high. For Professor Tobi Kollmann and his partner, Dr Nelly Amenyogbe, who have been brought to Perth by the Telethon Kids Institute and the Perth Children's Hospital Foundation to open the first paediatric research centre for the Human Vaccines Project, sometimes the greatest vaccine prizes are right under our noses. In May this year, the team published a paper that showed the century old Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine for TB, when repurposed, helped kickstart newborns’ immune systems in their vulnerable first days of life when sepsis is a deadly threat.
Supercharging Their research found that there was a dramatic and rapid increase in neutrophils (firstly in mice) and then in human newborns in West Africa and Papua New Guinea within three days of the vaccine being administered. “It’s been known for a long time that neutrophils play an important role in managing sepsis, but until now nobody understood the role of BCG in initiating this critical process,” Dr Amenyogbe said at the time. “It was actually thought to be biologically implausible, however, we’ve not only shown how BCG is involved, but that it kicks off this process almost instantly following vaccination – far more quickly than anticipated.” It was a thrilling find and one close to Prof Kollmann’s heart. Forty years ago, Swedish-born, Denmark-raised anthropologist-medico 14 | SEPTEMBER 2020
MEDICAL FORUM | RESPIR ATORY HEALTH ISSUE
