Technology Area: Vaccines

Technologies 5

• OMNIVAX: Broadly Deployable Infection Vaccine Platform
  Infectious diseases pose one of the greatest threats to public health, and vaccination campaigns with broad population coverage – arguably the most powerful strategy for preventing, controlling, and treating infectious diseases – have eradicated or significantly reduced the risk of contracting diseases such as smallpox, measles, polio, and tetanus. However, there is a constant need for...
• Bone Marrow-Like Scaffolds for Accelerating Immune Reconstitution
  Bone marrow transplants containing hematopoietic stem cells from an immune-compatible (“allogeneic”) donor can cure patients with otherwise fatal blood disorders including multiple myeloma and leukemias by reconstituting their entire immune systems after chemotherapy. However, following such a “hematopoietic stem cell transplantation” (HSCT), the restoration of T cell immunity – which depends on the production of...
• Controlled Enzymatic RNA Oligonucleotide Synthesis
  Synthetic RNA oligonucleotides designed as specific successions of the four nucleobases A, U, G, and C that mimic naturally occurring RNA species are the key components of diverse RNA-based therapies. These include RNA therapeutics that can partially or completely turn off the expression of disease-causing genes (antisense and interfering RNAs), help replace or supplement dysfunctional...
• Cell-Free Biomolecule Manufacturing
  Wyss Institute researchers have developed a biomolecular manufacturing method that can quickly and easily produce a wide range of vaccines, antimicrobial peptides and antibody conjugates while doing so anywhere, even in places without access to electrical power or refrigeration. The breakthrough could provide a life-saving workaround for making modern interventions available in remote areas. Today...
• Implantable Cancer Vaccine
  The Wyss Institute’s implantable, biodegradable cancer vaccine leverages immunotherapeutic methods and could one day help overcome melanoma, other cancers, infectious diseases, auto-immune diseases, as well as vaccinate against specific peptides, proteins, or antigens. The implant is a biodegradable polymer scaffold containing growth factors and components of each patient’s tumors. The technology was initially designed to...

News 17

View all

• Press Release
  
  Direct control of dendritic cells for tracking and immune modulation
  May 18, 2020
• Press Release
  
  Soup to Nuts
  April 24, 2020
• Research Spotlights
  
  “The world changed, so we changed with it”
  April 7, 2020

Multimedia 5

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  Video/Animation
  Beating Back the Coronavirus
  When the coronavirus pandemic forced Harvard University to ramp down almost all on-site operations, members of the Wyss Institute community refocused their teams, and formed new ones, in order to fight COVID-19 on its multiple fronts. These efforts include building new pieces of personal protective equipment that were delivered to frontline healthcare workers, developing new...

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  Audio/Podcast
  Disruptive: Cancer Vaccine and Immuno-Materials
  Immunotherapy – treatment that uses the body’s own immune system to help fight disease – has groundbreaking and life-saving implications. In an effort to make immunotherapy more effective, Wyss Institute researchers are developing new immuno-materials, which help modulate immune cells to treat or diagnose disease. In this episode of Disruptive, Dave Mooney, Wyss Core Faculty...

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  Video/Animation
  Wyss Focus: Immuno-Materials
  Wyss Core Faculty, Dave Mooney, explains our new Immuno-Materials Focus Area, which adds a new dimension to immunotherapy in that it harnesses materials to make treatments more efficient and effective. These material-based systems are capable of modulating immune cells and releasing them into the body where they can treat diseases.

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  Audio/Podcast
  Disruptive: Cancer Vaccine & Hydrogel Drug Delivery
  In this episode of Disruptive, Wyss Founding Core Faculty Member Dave Mooney discusses programmable nanomaterials approaches to fighting disease. Mooney explains how a cancer vaccine, developed by his team and currently in a clinical trial at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, can train one’s own immune system to target specific cancer cells. He also describes the...

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  Video/Animation
  Introduction to Implantable Cancer Vaccine
  What if we could prevent and treat cancer with a simple vaccine? Credit: Wyss Institute at Harvard University