Overcoming the "valley of death": Optimising pre-clinical models to triage vaccine candidates

Abstract    

As we enter an unprecedented era with increased risks of emerging infectious diseases, there is a pressing need to rapidly develop new vaccines that end disease outbreaks. Unfortunately, currently pre-clinical evaluation strategies do not accurately recapitulate real-world population success and most vaccines still fail in the later stages of clinical advancement due to suboptimal efficacy.  As such, there is a pressing need to develop improved pre-clinical evaluation strategies that allow for triage and assessment of multiple vaccines concurrently and produce outputs which better correlated with real-world vaccine success. Dr Burnett’s presentation will focus on using sophisticated humanised mouse models, next-generation sequencing and antibody repertoire exploration to better evaluate vaccines at the pre-clinical stage, allowing for enhanced selection of vaccine candidates resulting in translational and commercial success.  

Biography

Dr Deborah Burnett is a Senior Research Officer at Garvan Institute of Medical Research and Senior Lecturer at St Vincent’s Clinical School. Deborah’s research has focused on using advanced mouse models and next-generation sequencing technologies to understand the function and properties of B cells in infection, vaccine responses and autoimmunity. Her findings have been published in in numerous high impact journals including Science, Cell, Immunity, Nature Microbiology, Nature Communications and PNAS. Her current research has focused on developing models to better triage and evaluate vaccine candidates.   Her work is supported by an NHMRC Emerging Leadership Grant, an NSW OHMR RNA Future Leaders Grant, the Perpetual Impact Philanthropy Program, and a Ramachiotti Award.