"Pick/Merge" antigen design: a new strategy for universal vaccine design without fear of variants

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It’s all about the antigen

The working principle of a vaccine is to train the immune system to recognize and respond to infections by specific pathogens (such as viruses, parasites, or bacteria)

In order to solve this problem, Baseimmune's vaccine design algorithm integrates genomic, epidemiological, immunological, clinical and evolutionary data to create a new synthetic antigen, which contains all pathogens "most likely to elicit strong protective immunity.

These "select and mix" antigens will effectively provide the immune system with all the tools the immune system may need to know about how to recognize and respond to specific pathogens-now or in the future, with or without mutation

For example, the company recently collaborated with DNA vaccine pioneer Touchlight to develop a universal coronavirus vaccine designed to respond to the emergence of new mutations and prevent future pandemics

As early as January 2020, the Baseimmune team input a small amount of data about SARS-CoV-2 into their algorithm, correctly predicting that major mutations such as Alpha and Delta will not appear in the coming year

Co-founder Phillip Kemlo is a software engineer who built predictive algorithms.

Universal vaccine for malaria, COVID and other diseases

Baseimmune was established in 2019 to design and develop universal future vaccines for human and animal infections, including malaria, COVID and African swine fever

Co-founder Josh Blight is currently working at Imperial College London.

Co-founder Ariane Gomes said: “I grew up in Brazil and witnessed the impact of infectious diseases, just like my aunt lived with polio (a vaccine-preventable disease).

Jake Baum, a scientific consultant and professor of cell biology and infectious diseases at Imperial College London, is working with the team to develop a new malaria vaccine