Vaccines
Vaccine research at the Statens Serum Institute goes back to the institute’s founding in 1902, when it was set up to produce antisera for Diphtheria. Research soon expanded to other epidemic diseases. Today the main effort is devoted to vaccines against Tuberculosis, Chlamydia, HIV and novel adjuvants to direct and potentiate the immune responses.
Vaccine research at the Statens Serum Institute is focused on diseases that represent a major threat to global health globally such as M. tuberculosis, HIV, Chlamydia, Malaria and pandemic influenza. This work involves detailed antigen discovery programs aimed at identifying the proteins that are expressed by these pathogens and recognized by the immune system. Since not all antigens are expressed at all stages of infection, and not all expressed antigens are recognized, this has meant a multidisciplinary program involving genomics, proteomics, analyses of bacterial growth in the laboratory and human field studies in areas where these diseases are endemic.
The collaborations involved in the work span the globe with partner laboratories in Europe, North America, the Pacific, Africa and Asia. This program has successfully discovered promising new vaccines against M. tuberculosis, malaria and HIV, which are in human clinical trials in Europe and Africa.
The work is supported by basic research into adjuvant discovery, formulation and basic immunology which can potentially be applied to many vaccines. This has the goal of not only discovering new vaccines, but also improving the efficacy and safety of already existing vaccines. This effort has also been successful, with one of the first new adjuvants to be discovered in decades now in early stage clinical trials in humans.
The vaccine research program at the Statens Serum Institute has special expertise in the production of synthetic vaccines based on recombinant protein or DNA. These vaccines are of special interest because they are safe, cheap to produce and potentially very flexible. However in the past, synthetic vaccines were generally considered poorly immunogenic and thus not very effective. New vaccine delivery technology such as adjuvants have changed that. As a result, the Statens Serum Institute leads many international consortia aimed at developing new vaccines. See also Research Centres and Consortia.
Prof. Peter Lawætz Andersen is Vice President of Vaccine Research and Development at Statens Serum Institut
Prof. Peter Lawætz Andersen is Vice President of Vaccine Research and Development at Statens Serum Institut (SSI). Prior to this he was director of Infectious Disease Immunology (1997-2002) and the Tuberculosis Research Unit (1991-1997) both at SSI. In his current position at the SSI, he is responsible for the overall coordination of vaccine research and development, covering activities from early research and to clinical development.
Prof. Andersens research has been focused on the identification and characterisation of antigens, immune mechanisms and vaccine delivery systems that mediate protection against various pathogens and his main scientific interest has been immunity to intracellular pathogens such as Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Clamydia trachomatis. Prof. Andersen has pioneered work both on novel diagnostic assays (the IGRA assays), novel TB vaccines (H1/H4/H56) and the CAF series of liposomal adjuvants.
Prof. Andersen has more than 250 publications, within the field of infection, immunity and vaccine research in peer-reviewed journals and is the inventor of more than 20 novel patents within the vaccine field.
Last revised 21 December 2011