New research, same mission: improve human health

EPIVAX CEO Anne S. De Groot said
EPIVAX CEO Anne S. De Groot said "tregitope is likely to be an important new tool for clinicians who wish to improve the lives of patients." / PBN FILE PHOTO/MICHAEL PERSSON

If “immunoinformatics” ever becomes a household word, the team at Providence’s EpiVax Inc., led by CEO Dr. Anne S. De Groot, will likely be a central reason why.
Immunoinformatics refers to the combination of conventional immunological work done in the lab, with “informatics,” the processing of huge troves of DNA and other protein-based data, to custom-design vaccines and therapeutic responses to disease.
Using proprietary software, EpiVax – which last month announced a research partnership with a German company, Biotest AG – battles a wide range of public-health problems. On the roster of diseases and conditions at the top of the company’s list in the past 12 months have been: the H7N9 flu strain in China, Pompe disease (a life-threatening buildup of glycogen in the muscles), hemophilia A, multiple sclerosis, Type 1 diabetes and allergy.
Depending on the illness, and depending on whether it is being treated or prevented, EpiVax’s goal is either to trigger a specific response in the immune system or to prevent the immune system from getting involved in the first place.
For instance, for those with hemophilia A, a coagulant known as Factor VIII was first thought to be a yearned-for cure of the disease, and for some it was. A blood-clotting protein concentrated from donated blood plasma, Factor VIII gives hemophiliacs the ability to lead relatively normal lives, albeit burdened by injections, including, for certain patients (particularly children), IV ports. For some people being treated with the harvested Factor VIII, though, the therapy eventually produced an immune response that made the treatment stop working.
The promise of immunoinformatics is to step into a conundrum such as that presented by Factor VIII therapy rejection and make the treatment safe. That involves the introduction of Tregitopes, a sequence of amino acids that serves as an immune-system “off switch.” Biotest AG, which specializes in immunology and hematology, is partnering with EpiVax to pursue the creation of the safer Factor VIII product, in recognition of EpiVax’s cutting-edge work in the field.
De Groot and EpiVax Chief Information Officer William Martin discovered the Tregitopes in a common human protein, IgG, when performing routine immunoinformatics analysis of the protein for some clients.
“We kept finding the same short strings of amino acids in the IgGs, and my team would come to me and they would say that the same signature is there again,” De Groot said. “Then we would report to the client that their protein had a very common signature and the body has probably seen it a lot, so it would not cause any problems. But finally we made this ‘aha!’ leap and realized that the signature was not an on-switch for immune response, it was there because it was suppressing an immune response. It was an off-switch.”
Tregitopes are the latest focus of the company’s work, and may, if De Groot and her team are right, prove uniquely successful for inducing tolerance to protein drugs, preventing organ and tissue-transplant rejection, and treating autoimmune diseases.
EpiVax, located in Prividence’s so-called Knowledge District, a few doors up from Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School, is a reflection of its founder’s commitment to public health.
“I’m a physician and I want to make products that help human health everywhere,” said De Groot.
She says genetically derived therapeutics, constituting part of EpiVax’s work, are in their second generation.
“The original hope of the genetic-engineering revolution was that we would be able to create all of these human-gene-derived therapies that no one had any immune reaction to, and that turned out to be wrong,” said De Groot.
One of the central themes in De Groot’s work has been HIV research. She has a special relationship with the people of Mali, where she built an AIDS clinic that successfully put in place a program preventing mother-to-child transmission of HIV.
But HIV research is also a source of impatience, and in some regards, suffering, on the part of the doctor herself. The suffering stems from the fact that De Groot actually has developed the design for an HIV vaccine, created using immunoinformatics, nearly ready for human trials. But she’s been unable to find funding to bring her vaccine into human trials.
Also comprising part of EpiVax’s work and mission is producing vaccines addressing bioterror agents, including weaponized smallpox, tuberculosis and influenza. EpiVax has been contracted for the work by DARPA, the advanced research program of the Department of Defense to develop a rapid vaccine response to bioterror agents in the event of an attack. The project recently generated a Lassa Fever vaccine in less than 90 days.
As for where the company is going next, De Groot has a vision: “I wouldn’t say that we’re not interested in an IPO, but I would say that what we’re more interested in is angel or venture investors who really understand our vision,” she said. “Our mission is to improve human health everywhere.”
It’s a mission that has the phone and email inboxes at the company doing heavy duty, and the company’s founder flying around the globe. “I’m the one who communicates the science,” said De Groot, who has a stable of talented young scientists working under her. •

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