Heat Biologics CEO Jeff Wolf talks with Contagion about the firm’s effort to develop a vaccine for the coronavirus focused on combining antibody and T cell immunity using the GP-96 protein.
“We have a very unique vaccine,” Wolf claims, pointing to advantages over existing vaccines, such as the potential to use the company’s GP-96 vaccine platform in older populations.
GP-96 is what’s known as a “chaperone protein” because its function is to fold other proteins and place peptides on the cell’s surface.
According to Heat, the GP-96 based technology is already being investigated for cancer and has been tested using Department of Defense funding for other infectious diseases.
While the GP-96 platform is the same as Heat uses for oncology research, Wolf argues it’s well-suited for taking on pandemics like SARS-CoV-2.
