Vaccine development is inherently high-risk. From concept to market, it takes on average 11 years to develop a successful vaccine candidate, with a market entry of approximately 6%. Most failures predominantly occur due to insufficient efficacy and are usually detected in late clinical evaluation.
Improving vaccine success rates by just 5% in the early stages of development would result in significant cost savings, estimated at $250 million per vaccine candidate. To improve early vaccine triage we need to overcome one of the key challenges, of poor correlation between pre-clinical models and human protective immunity.
Broadly neutralising antibodies (bnAbs) are play a crucial role in protective immunity against a variety of infectious threats. Current vaccine progress against numerous threats is hindered by a lack of correlation between pre-clinical models and the real-world human response.
Deborah’s research focuses on optimising next-generation platforms to triage vaccine responses more accurately against globally significant pathogens. Her work will allow us to develop more effective vaccines against infectious threats that have, until now, evaded vaccine control.
This includes infectious threats that rapidly mutate to avoid antibody protection or that mimic molecules on our own tissues.
