Dear Family and Friends of VIC,
This has been a difficult year. With your help VIC has risen to the challenge by pivoting to address COVID-19 while continuing uninterrupted by the pandemic to develop new vaccines and immunotherapies for cancer, infectious and immune mediated diseases.
Several of our key achievements in 2020 are outlined below but please read the attached for more detail on VIC scientists’ exciting research
- Rapidly modified our existing vaccine development platform to design and begin testing of a new vaccine for COVID-19, focused on inducing a strong T cell response. While we hope that large scale vaccine efforts are successful, evidence shows this approach will produce longer lasting protection
- Established new collaborative work with biotech companies to develop powerful new tools for COVID-19 testing
- Received rapid FDA approval for first in human testing of our novel B cell immunotherapy for the treatment of a patient with ALS
- Developed a new treatment for type 1 diabetes and demonstrated proof of principle in mouse model of the disease
We would like to thank all family and friends of VIC, old and new, including Analog Devices, UniFirst and New England Biolabs, who made donations this year and helped make the impossible possible. You all helped bring VIC successfully and impactfully through this very challenging year. We are grateful for your continued support into 2021.
A Very Happy Thanksgiving to All from,
Dr. Mark Poznansky, Dr. Ann Sluder & the VIC team