Geert Vanden Bossche
Coimeva LLC, Belgium
Biography
Geert Vanden Bossche received his doctoral degree in Veterinary Medicine from the University of Ghent, Belgium, and obtained his PhD degree in Virology from the University of Hohenheim, Germany. Following his Postdoctoral training in Equine Medicine and Surgery at the Free University of Berlin, He went on to complete additional training in Virology, Immunology and Molecular Biology at the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin where he became board certified in Virology and Microbiology. He then transitioned to Environmental Virology and joined the University of Hohenheim as Head of the Virology research lab where he conducted several research projects related to the detection of microbial contamination in environmental samples and biophysical behavior of viruses in aqueous environments. He was given the venia legendi in Virology (1996) and held adjunct faculty appointments from the University of Hohenheim and the European Faculty for Environmental Sanitation where he taught Zoonotic Diseases and Environmental Virology. After his career in Academia, he joined GlaxoSmithKline to serve various roles in early and late vaccine development and as Head of GSK’s Vaccine Adjuvant and Alternative Vaccine Delivery platform. After leaving GSK, he joined Novartis Vaccines & amp; Diagnostics in Siena (Italy) and Emeryville (US) where he served as Director on the RSV and Influenza vaccine project and as Head of Adjuvants. Following his engagement with Novartis, he served as Global Project Director in Solvay Biologicals’ Influenza program devoting his primary efforts to coordinating the early stage development of an improved seasonal and pandemic Influenza cell-culture vaccine. He then moved on to join the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Global Health Discovery team in Seattle, US. In his role as Senior Program Officer, he has been initiating and coordinating numerous efforts supporting the innovation needed to develop new vaccines and new approaches to immune intervention. He also worked with GAVI, where he has been tracking efforts to develop an Ebola vaccine. He has represented GAVI in fora with other partners, including WHO and CDC, to review progress on the fight against Ebola and to build plans for a global pandemic preparedness. More recently, he joined the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF) where he has been coordinating R& D projects related to vaccines and infectious diseases at German universities and research centers. Geert’s research activities are now centered on the design and development of NK cell-based vaccines. He is the Author of more than 20 scientific papers and has been invited to speak at multiple international congresses.
Abstract
Immunologists have learned a tremendous amount from vaccinologists but learnings in the opposite direction have been rather poor. Despite the development of a multitude of new vaccine technologies, current vaccine approaches are still empirical and very much focused on inducing measurable immune responses that mimic those induced upon natural infection and which correlate with natural protection. ‘Modern’ vaccinology rarely takes into consideration the ground-breaking knowledge and insights gained since many years by immunologists and molecular epidemiologists on how throughout evolution pathogens have evolved immune subversive mechanisms to adapt to their natural host such as to ensure their replication and propagation. As a result of this dogma-driven ignorance, the vaccine field continues to struggle with very little progress made in the fight against infections and immune-mediated or immune-tolerated diseases other than the notorious ‘low-hanging fruit’. Despite the long-standing evidence of the critical role of highly conserved pathogen-derived self-mimicking peptides and glycan patterns in the immune pathogenesis of infectious or immune-mediated diseases or cancer, we either ignore this knowledge or don’t know how to translate it into a truly ‘rational’ vaccine design. It is, therefore, high time for vaccine makers to shift gears and take advantage of relevant epidemiological and immunological insights into host-pathogen interactions and the immune pathogenesis of infectious or immune-mediated disease to finally translate this critical knowledge into ‘universal’ vaccine approaches that safely drive an immune defense strategy that is no longer frustrated by natural infection or naturally occurring immune-mediated or tumour disease. There is an increasing consensus that in order to do so, vaccines should elicit immune responses that are fundamentally different from those induced upon natural infection or other immune-related diseases.