Calling the Shots
Developing New and Improved Vaccines and Therapies
Robert Frenck Jr., MD, is a voice for vaccines at Cincinnati Children’s.
Not only is he the hospital’s go-to person for explaining the latest immunization recommendations to the public, he is also a researcher in the Division of Infectious Diseases working on one of the largest contracts Cincinnati Children’s has ever received.
The $23.7 million Vaccine Treatment Evaluation Unit contract, from the National Institutes of Health, has eight units in the country. The Cincinnati Children’s unit, headed by David Bernstein, MD, MA, is in year three of a seven-year contract to conduct research that will help shape national immunization policies.
“Last year, we were busy working with H1N1, or swine flu, and testing a number of the candidate vaccines,” Frenck says. “We were able to give information to the federal government about how many doses of vaccine should be used and if there’s a need for a booster dose. We also were able to give some ideas about the side effects and safety of the vaccine.”
Developing Vaccines
In the Cincinnati Children’s unit, researchers look at developing vaccines for many common infections. They recruit 50 to 100 volunteers for each study, who come to the hospital’s Gamble Program for Clinical Studies to help test potential vaccines. The studies include all ages, from infants to the elderly.
This year, diarrheal diseases are on the team’s research agenda. They are working on vaccines or treatments against shigella, norovirus, traveler’s diarrhea and cholera, among others.
Working with Industry
For Frenck, being a voice for vaccines means researchers are responsible for making sure a vaccine is safe and makes sense. That sometimes makes his team the link between academic medicine and industry.
To that end, the research team has been a significant participant, conducting studies and presenting scientific findings to the drug company Pfizer on the 13-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV-13), which has replaced Prevnar (PCV-7), a vaccine used to prevent infection caused by pneumococcal bacteria. This bacteria is a common cause of ear infections as well as pneumonia and meningitis in kids and adults.
Researchers have worked to find out how well drugs work against it and how to improve the vaccine. The partnership with industry is key to making broad changes, Frenck says.
“Industry has the resources to be able to make vaccines on a big scale,” he says. “You can develop a vaccine, but you have to have the capital, the resources and the backing. There’s no way academics can undertake that.”
Getting the Word Out
Ultimately, researchers such as Frenck want to make vaccines safer and easier for people to take.
They take practical concerns of patients into account. If people have a fear of needles, Frenck wants to know if they can take flu vaccine via an injection under the skin instead of in the muscle. That way, the needle is smaller and not as painful.
Additionally, he and researcher Michael Gerber, MD, are looking at whether they can increase the amount of flu vaccine given to younger children without changing the side effects while getting better immune responses to better protect them from the infection.
These are the kinds of practical studies that will make a shot in the arm a little easier to take, Frenck says.
“People need to understand is that of all the diseases, there’s only one that we’ve ever completely eradicated, and that’s smallpox,” he says. “Every other one is still there, just waiting its chance to come back.”
