At the ForeFront
Re-educating the immune system
Dr. Tara Lysechko helps develop hepatitis vaccines as part of a unique program encouraging academic scientists to work in industry.
After finishing her undergraduate science degree, Tara Lysechko was eager to work in industry. She was soon hired by a biotechnology company in British Columbia, and her career was launched. Or so she thought.
"I enjoyed the work, but I could see that an undergraduate degree wasn't going to be enough to ensure a successful career. To get ahead in industry, I needed to further my education." So it was back to the books for a doctorate in immunology from the University of Alberta.
While many people with Ph.D. degrees choose to stay in the academic world, Dr. Lysechko wanted to get her industrial career back on track. As it turned out, she was in the right place at the right time. AHFMR was starting a pilot project to encourage academic scientists to work in Alberta's health industries. Edmonton-based ViRexx Medical Corp., a company that develops therapies for cancer and viral infections, was looking for a scientist to take charge of a key project supporting the development of new therapeutic vaccines for use against the hepatitis B and hepatitis C viruses.
Dr. Lysechko is now working at ViRexx as the first recipient of AHFMR's ForeFront Industrial Research Award.
"The ForeFront award is a win-win for the company and the trainee," says Dr. Lysechko. "ViRexx gets skilled help in the lab. I get valuable industrial research experience."
Dr. Rajan George, ViRexx's senior vice-president and the principal investigator for Dr. Lysechko's project, is just as enthusiastic. "Tara is the perfect fit. She is an immunologist and has experience with the experiments we need to do. Plus, she's committed to working in industry-this is the environment she wants to be in. We're lucky to have her."
Dr. Lysechko's project is part of a comprehensive research program aimed at developing vaccines for the treatment of chronic hepatitis B and C infections. Carriers of these hepatitis viruses have ineffective immune responses that are unable to clear the viruses from their body, leaving them at risk of developing cirrhosis and liver cancer. Worldwide, about one million deaths each year are attributed to liver diseases resulting from chronic hepatitis B infection alone.
"There's been a breakdown in the immune system of chronic hepatitis B carriers," explains Dr. George. "A compromise has been made which allows the virus to persist. Our vaccine is designed to break that compromise and re-educate the immune system so that it recognizes the virus as an outsider, not an insider."
ViRexx's Chimigen vaccines are designed to take advantage of the two main ways the immune system reacts to antigens -foreign substances that, when introduced into the body, stimulate production of antibodies. Chimigen vaccines induce both types of immune response to attack the infectious agent, break tolerance, and eliminate infected cells. The vaccine is made up of two components: one from the virus and the other from an antibody. The two are fused into a new protein that the body recognizes as foreign.
"There's no point in giving more antigen to a chronic hep B or hep C carrier-it won't be recognized as foreign," says Dr. George. "With a Chimigen vaccine, chronic carriers receive a new molecule that is recognized as foreign, and this stimulates immune responses against hepatitis B or C."
Dr. Lysechko's experiments are designed to look for these responses in the immune-system cells of chronic hepatitis B or C carriers. She works with immunologist Dr. Bruce Motyka, ViRexx's R&D director, and Dr. Klaus Gutfreund, a consultant hepatologist and an associate professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Alberta. Dr. Lysechko obtains blood samples from carriers of chronic hepatitis B and C and isolates key cells from the blood. She exposes these cells to the vaccine, and then monitors and measures the immune response. The entire process takes about two weeks per sample.
Results to date are promising. "We are seeing a proliferation of T cells, which means they have recognized the viral antigens as foreign," says Dr. Lysechko. "What we're not sure about is what regions of the antigen the T cells are actually seeing. We'll definitely be following this up.
"Of course, there's still a lot of work to be done, and my project is just one piece of the puzzle. Nonetheless it's exciting to be a part of something that has so much potential. This is where I want to be-working in a team that is translating research into clinical developments that will help people."