Vaccibody develops targeted DNA vaccines designed to kill cancer cells, bacteria and viruses. One of its vaccines is now being trialled on humans for the first time. The trials are being conducted at four different hospitals in Germany, where more than 20 women with cervical cancer have been offered the vaccine as an alternative to surgery, which is the standard form of treatment today. The cancer vaccine is a treatment vaccine – not a preventive vaccine.
Cracking the code for effective vaccines
Vaccibody is also developing vaccines against other types of cancer and infectious diseases. They create different varieties of vaccines and test them in the laboratory. The vaccines are then tested in the animal department at Oslo University Hospital, the Norwegian Radium Hospital to check that they produce an immune response in mice. They also make vaccines that are tested elsewhere. The vaccine being used in the current clinical trials is manufactured in a factory in the UK.
Chief Scientific Officer at Vaccibody, Agnete B. Fredriksen, believes they have cracked the code for how to make effective vaccines. She developed the vaccine technology in collaboration with Professor Inger Sandlie at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences at the University of Oslo (UiO), who was her MSc supervisor, and Professor Bjarne Bogen at the Faculty of Medicine at UiO, who was her P