March For Science: What’s Next?

More than a week has passed since scientists gathered together to march and to celebrate science and the role it plays in everyday lives. On Saturday 22 April, at the March for Science in Boston we, as VIC, were marching together with hundreds of people to stand up for science. It was truly inspirational. In many cities across the world scientists decided to champion evidence-based policy and they decided to do it on a very special day, the Earth Day. Massachusetts General Hospital was there too together with all the many scientific institutions that reside in Boston. Many science supporters were there as well, to reinforce scientists’ voices, regardless of the rain and the cold weather. It was truly moving to witness how much people care about science and how much they believe that scientific progress is in the public’s best interest.

The event was intended to be non-partisan but with an acknowledgement of the actual political agenda. The funding cuts that have been hypothesized are considered unacceptable in the scientific community. All the emphatic speeches that we heard that day, from the primary school kid to the emeritus professor, reminded us that science is not to be taken for granted and neither is its funding. Science does not just happen but it needs to be nurtured, supported and welcomed by society. Science is an important component of human kind, not only to improve our health but also to make progress for human civilization.

So now, what’s next? Most people have no idea how science actually works and this is one of the main reasons why science is always under attack. Being “pro-science” cannot be just a cultural phenomenon or an elite way of thinking. In this, scientists are guilty for not being effective communicators of the relevance and the impact of their ideas and their discoveries. There is too much confusion and misunderstanding about what scientists do and work on. VIC has decided to be proactive, not only in making science communication effective, but also as a way to reach potential donors who are non-scientists themselves. VIC indeed, does not rely only on the support of public grants, but also on the generosity of private philanthropy. And this can happen only if we can make the general public understand the role of science and the benefits for human kind. As a very first step, scientists must start communicating science effectively to make society understand the basics of their work in order to allow informed decisions to be made.

A New Device Can Revolutionize Vaccine Adjuvant Technology

To maximize vaccine efficiency, chemical and/or biological substances are used as immunologic adjuvants to increase the body’s immune response to the vaccine. A new class of vaccine adjuvant, namely laser light, is slowly becoming of interest for its potential benefit of being safer than the classical adjuvants and for being more efficient for intradermal vaccination. Most vaccines are still delivered by the intramuscular or subcutaneous routes but there is a growing interest in intradermal vaccine delivery. Indeed, the dermis and epidermis of human skin are rich in antigen-presenting cells that enhance the immune response. Laser light offers promising anticipation for its use with intradermal vaccines. Here at the Vaccine and Immunotherapy Center (VIC) we have focused on developing a new class of energy-based, physical immunological adjuvants. In particular, we recently developed a handheld near-infrared laser device that can potentially be used as an adjuvant in vaccine administration and at a lower cost than current commercially-available laser systems. The small size and the low cost of the device could be beneficial to engage this adjuvant for mass-vaccination programs.

As for laser therapy though, one of the biggest challenges to face is human skin pigmentation and its high variability. Laser application in subjects with darker complexions remains a topic of great concern. Melanin is the primary pigment that determines the color of the human skin and understanding the relationship between melanin and wavelength is fundamental in the use of laser devices for human therapies or treatments, as melanin interferes with specific target absorption. The near-infrared wavelengths, that the new laser device developed at VIC is capable of producing, makes, in principle, the variability of light absorption based on melanin chromophore almost negligible. This is extremely important for the prospect of mass-vaccination for patients with large quantities of melanin in the epidermis. This laser system, and the next-generation devices that Dr. Kashiwagi is currently working on, have the potential of a more uniform effect across skin pigmentation variability. In countries like the US where heterogeneity in the skin color population is high, a laser device with broader wavelength ability is extremely promising in the treatment of patients with different levels of epidermal melanin.

The Importance of Recording Research – Insights From The Meeting With LabArchives

Back in 2002 there was a big scandal that involved the notorious German physicist Jan Hendrik Schön which shocked the physics community. He rose to prominence after publishing several works on big journals in the field of the physics of organic molecular materials. His work won him numerous awards, and some colleagues even started to tip him for a Nobel Prize. When several research groups tried to reproduce his spectacular results without success the first allegations began to arise. His semiconductors turned out to be just fraudulent. The committee in charge of investigating his case requested copies of the raw data but found that Schön had kept no laboratory notebooks. Keeping a day-to-day record of the experiments performed is a contractual requirement for scientists and is fundamental to avoid fraud as well as to defend patents. Just very recently one of biggest disputed patents in science of all time has finally come to an end. The promising and revolutionary genome-editing technology CRISPR-Cas9 is a tool that many companies want to use to develop human therapies and a couple of laboratories claim this patent. Without entering the details of the dispute between the two institutes, the patent judges made their decisions based on the fact that the group that firstly proposed CRISPR/Cas9 as a tool for programmable gene editing did not report any experiments in eukaryotic cells (based on their laboratory notes) and therefore that group could not control the valuable intellectual property linked to CRISPR/Cas9 in the context of companies editing mouse or human genomes.

These are just a couple of notable examples that highlight that maintenance of a good laboratory notebook is of fundamental importance since it is a legal document. At the Vaccine and Immunotherapy Center (VIC) we value and support this good practice. Along this line, we recently had an interesting overview about the possibility to replace the old-fashioned paper-based laboratory notebook with an electronic equivalent version. LabArchives is a web-based electronic notebook platform that is available for free within the circuit of Partners HealthCare. An electronic lab notebook offers many advantages that the paper version cannot offer and together with LabArchives we have reviewed some of them. A lab notebook can be used in a court of law as evidence in cases of scientific fraud. One of the major advantages that LabArchives offers is that no data will ever be lost or get truly deleted. A revision history page is available anytime where every single change is visible and trackable. And guess what? You can recover any of the deleted files, including images, texts, data tables or molecular structures. This constitutes a revolutionary approach on how to document research, experiments, and procedures performed by a scientist or a research group. No more excuses of stolen, lost or consumed lab notes. And no more excuses of limited hard drive space in the laptop since LabArchives is a cloud-based resource with unlimited storage. This could constitute a major step in preventing science misconduct as well as in safeguarding scientists from false allegations. But a lab notebook can also often be referred to in patent prosecution and intellectual property litigation. LabArchives records every change as well as the time at which the change has been made and the person who has made the change. Every data and every modification/edit has a date and time stamp obtained from the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Moreover, a page in LabArchives can be signed by the administrator and further modification is not allowed following the electronic signature. All of these features become important to prove who and when the invention was conceived in a patent contestation.

At VIC we believe that a lab notebook is as important as doing experiments and making discoveries. A lab notebook is a primary record of the research we do and a true scientific legacy for us. As a tool to organize and memorize data it also serves in protecting any intellectual property that comes from our research. For these reasons, we are always trying to improve the way we record and store our data; and we believe that the LabArchives platform that Partners HealthCare made available could potentially be of use for our scopes and purposes.

Dr. Mark Poznansky Speaks at Tufts University Global Health Seminar

On November 29th Dr. Mark Poznansky spoke to a group of Tufts University students about emerging infectious disease, global health and the Vaccine and Immunotherapy Center’s (VIC) contributions to vaccine development. The event, organized by Chloe Boehm, a VIC intern, on behalf of Tufts Timmy Global Health, a group dedicated to alleviating health disparities through their work in Guatemala and in the greater Boston area, brought together a diverse group of Tufts students, largely representing the community health and biology departments.

The interdisciplinary nature of the event led to a discussion of larger topics within global health, including the effect of climate change on emerging infectious disease and the increasing range of Aedis aegypti mosquito, an important vector in the spread of Dengue and Zika.

As Dr. Poznansky delineated VIC’s innovative VaxCelerate program, many students were impressed with the coordination and collaborative nature of VIC’s rapid vaccine development initiative. Second year undergraduate Evan Cook remarked, “Giving up personal victory is essential when trying to effectively and efficiently find therapies to aid the general public.” Indeed, the VaxCelerate model relies on ‘team science’ and interdisciplinary collaboration to develop vaccines within a drastically reduced time frame. The exciting concept of providing ‘vaccines on demand’ also shows VIC’s commitment to embracing novel technologies for research. A discussion of the progression of immunological research, from the development of FACS to the more recent CyTOF, cemented VIC as a pioneer in the early adoption of biomedical technologies.

The translational approach to research and development employed by VIC occupies a unique niche, one that has resulted in the development of clinically relevant therapies and vaccines. This lesson of collaboration and coordination is integral to the development of young scientists and health professionals, and will continue to guide translational research for years to come.

Update On The New CDC Guidelines For Outpatient Antibiotic Prescribing

As covered in the previous VIC blog post, the UN organized a meeting in September to draw the attention of health care providers, researchers, and politicians to the growing problem of antibiotic resistance throughout the world. On November 11th, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued new guidelines to limit unnecessary prescriptions for antibiotics and to promote more responsible prescribing patterns in outpatient facilities. The Core Elements of Outpatient Antibiotic Stewardship outline four pillars that outpatient health care providers should adapt their practice around including commitment, action for policy and practice, tracking and reporting, and education and expertise. The CDC proposed the new pillars in an effort to encourage physicians to curb their excessive antibiotic prescribing practices, which could limit the transmission of antibiotic-resistant infections and effectively decrease the associated costs of medical treatment.

The CDC developed the new guidelines in response to recent reports that highlighted the majority of inappropriate antibiotic prescriptions as being for viral infections and the tendency of providers to prescribe broad-spectrum antibiotics for common bacterial infections. The reports revealed areas of potential improvement to physicians and researchers and presented the problem of antibiotic resistance as largely preventable through commitment to change in outpatient facilities. In order to improve, the CDC suggests that outpatient practices monitor the antibiotic prescribing history of its physicians and provide each clinician with data on their performance relative to his or her coworkers. The governmental guidelines also encourage outpatient practices to educate physicians about proper antibiotic prescribing and clinicians to spend more time with patients to clearly explain when antibiotics are and are not necessary.

The guidelines are easily adaptable and offer outpatient facilities a great deal of flexibility in how they choose to implement and enforce certain provisions from the report. In addition, the guidelines offer a clear evidence-based pathway for clinicians to limit the spread of antibiotic-resistant infections, preventing potential deaths and slowing the rise in health care costs.

Written by: Ben Maxner

http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2016/11/cdc-issues-roadmap-guide-outpatient-antibiotic-prescribing

Report On The UN Meeting On The Rising Global Effects Of Antibiotic Resistance.

On September 21st the UN held an historical meeting to discuss the rising global effects of antibiotic resistance. These high-level meetings on health issues have only been held in times of crisis, as in 2011 to discuss eradicating HIV and the AIDs and in 2014 to discuss stopping the spread of Ebola.

Antibiotic resistance is the rising challenge countries around the world are facing, with patients becoming infected in greater numbers (2 million/year as reported by the CDC) from common bacterial infections that have been easily treated in the past. The use of antibiotics over the years has come to be accepted and prescribed in large quantities and, as a result, the evolution of super-bugs (or organisms resistant to current antibiotic on the market) is becoming more prevalent. This causes complications in surgical and cancer treatment cases and poses mounting costs on the healthcare system worldwide. The UN addressed this issue and is pushing for greater awareness of the problem from medical providers, researchers and the public on the importance of antibiotic use in cases of infection and for the proper handling of medications. Over prescription and over consumption of antibiotics is believed to have caused this resistance to surface and, therefore, we must be wary of the potential outcomes of continuing such practices.

The adverse effects of antibiotic resistance will also affect agriculture and animal husbandry as the economic impact of antibiotic resistant crops and animals to disease will hit worldwide, and the implications of a mass-loss in substance production would be felt in everybody’s pockets.

It is vital to maintain an awareness of the outcomes of new policy changes and major decisions on this issue and an unprecedented global effort will be required to tackle the resistance to antibiotics. Researchers at VIC are committed to developing new vaccines to prevent emerging infectious diseases.

Written By: Anastasia Artamonova

http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/09/21/494914739/u-n- pledges-to- fight-antibiotic-resistance- in-historic- agreement

Dr. Satoshi Kashiwagi at VIC Receives 2016 DOM Innovation Pilot Grants From The MGH Medicine Innovation Program

Dr. Satoshi Kashiwagi, a Principal Investigator at VIC, receives 2016 DOM Innovation Pilot Grant. This award is created by the Medicine Innovation Program to accelerate the development and introduction of innovative ideas that clearly move an existing project along a defined path from idea to working solution. In this project entitled “Near-infrared laser to augment antigen specific tolerance”, Dr. Kashiwagi hopes to successfully develop an effective immunotherapy using laser light that will save patients suffering from autoimmune diseases.
Dr. Kashiwagi is Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He was trained as an obstetrician in Japan, and finished his research training at MGH in the fields of tumor angiogenesis and nitric oxide biology. He is currently running his laboratory in VIC with support of NIH R01 grant. His laboratory’s central focus has been to develop a new class of energy-based, physical immunological adjuvants.

VIC at Myopia Polo 2016

On July 31st, VIC headed back to Myopia Polo Club for the third annual “VIC at Myopia Polo” event. This event, held in support of our research to advance cures for cancer, diabetes and infectious diseases, brought together young professionals from around New England for an afternoon of polo, cocktails and charity. Despite the chance of inclement weather, the event sold out to nearly 200 attendees for the third year in a row. Guests dressed their finest to vie for a chance to win the much-talked-about “best dressed” award – a competition that was nearly to close to call!

As the doors opened to the event, the skies cleared and attendees sipped cocktails and watched Team USPA take on South America in a high-speed, 16-goal polo exhibition match. While the match was a tie, the game was a fury of breakaways and jaw-dropping skill shots, delighting the veteran and first-time attendees in the crowd alike. This match, now known as the Will Tankard Memorial, was held in memory of Will Tankard, a young man and talented polo player who grew up playing at the club.

We’d like to thank our sponsors – 90+ Cellars, Lila Wines, Turkey Shore Distillery, Downeast Cider, Carol Bruce, Wendy Drinkwater and Rick Salter – for making such a day memorable. We’d also like to thank Alex Ingram and the VICtors youth board for their assistance in putting together this wonderful event. Finally, we’d like to thank all of our attendees for showing up in support of VIC – we can’t wait to see you all next year!

In case you missed them, you can see all the photos from the event here.

Summer Students of 2016

Written By: Anastasia Artamonova

As summer comes and goes, it is the warm memories we form now that get us through the cold Boston winters. The wonderful students of VIC have been with us for several weeks now and, sadly, it is the time to say goodbye. From veterinary school to international relations, the students represent a variety of interests and ideas as they come into VIC. However, upon departure they all leave with newfound appreciation for the science that happens behind the scenes. We have had the pleasure of working with them in a variety of projects in which they have had direct roles and impact.

From left to right, back row: Wataru Katagiri, Chloe Boehm, Ellie Dunstone, Alice Tang, Anastasia Artamonova and Steven Kandilas.
The front row: Erin Soon, Kia Lor, Scarlett Se Yun Cheon, Anita Vohra
Not Pictured: Michael Tian

An enormous thank you is in order for all the students and staff at VIC for creating the place for learning and science to come together and expose the beauty of science to the future generations. Wherever the paths may lead them in the future, we are with them and wish them the best!

Utah Zika Diagnosis Raises Questions of How the Disease Can Spread

By Anastasia Artamonova

On Tuesday, the CDC announced that a Utah caretaker appears to have become infected with the Zika virus apart from the currently known means of exposure, which include bite from an infected mosquito or sexual contact with an infected person. The person diagnosed had been caring for an elderly family member who passed away in June of 2016, having been the first case of Zika-related death in the United States. This case raises the possibility that the Zika virus can be transmitted in a new and currently unknown way, since mosquitos that carry Zika are not known to exist in Utah, the caretaker was not reported to have traveled in areas where the carrier mosquito is present, and he had not reported any sexual contact with Zika-infected individuals. 

The Vaccine and Immunotherapy Center has a research team, led by Dr. Dahlene Fusco, that is working on mechanisms related to immune responses to Zika. The VIC Zika research team recognizes the importance of maintaining a safe research environment while striving to bring to light more information on  the virus. Our team will be closely monitoring events in Utah for any updated information, and until further information is available we are following the safety precautions stated by the CDC.

More information about Zika can be found at:

http://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2016/s0718-zika-utah-investigation.html