[John King, Cnn:] There are more than 100 possible vaccines being researched. One of the newer projects is taking cues from successful gene therapy treatments. Dr. Mason Freeman is part of that project. He's director of Translational Research Center at Massachusetts General Hospital. Doctor, thank you for being with us today. Walk us through why your research using gene therapy might be different from some of the other vaccine efforts?
[Dr. Mason Freeman, Director, Translational Research Center, Massachusetts General Hospital:] Good afternoon, John. Thank you for having me to present about our vaccine therapy. The vaccine is different from all of the other vaccines that are currently in process, in development, particularly with those that have commercial partners, in that we use a adeno-associated virus, abbreviated AAV. The other vaccines that you're seeing out there use something called adenovirus, so it's pretty close and can be confusing. And then many of them are using more traditional vaccine techniques, such as just injecting protein with an adjuvant, no virus. And then there are interesting and newer ones, like the one you probably talked about before, called Modera, where there's no viral vector delivery in the vaccine into the body, but it's just RNA attached to an agent made up of lipid that helps it get into cells. Ours is unique in terms of the delivery vector that's being used, which makes is very efficient at delivering the vaccine into the body where the antibodies can then have an immune response to it.
[King:] I was reading your work. One of the things you're concerned about is that everybody's in a rush here, for good reason. Everybody's trying to hurry, but you worry about something called disease enhancement. Explain to someone without your expertise what that means.
[Freeman:] Well, for most of vaccine development in the history of vaccine development, this hasn't been an issue that's been of much concern. But in recent years, we've seen this process whereby you create a vaccine. The goal of the vaccine is to have the person who's being vaccinated generate an immune response, typically an antibody response. There are other responses, but that's the typical response you want to see. And what we've seen with dengue fever and with something called respiratory syncytial virus is that the antibodies themselves can actually enhance the ability of the virus to get into cells, when is a prerequisite for the virus to be able to divide and replicate and cause disease. So, this is a significant concern to make sure that the antibodies that we raised to the coronavirus don't actually make the patients worse after vaccination but actually provide the immunity that we're seeking.
[King:] And in terms of your work using gene therapy, where are you on the trajectory in the sense of when do you think you'll be testing in humans? And when is your most optimistic hope of, if things go well, where you might have something to say, hey, this works?
[Freeman:] Well, just yesterday, we got data back from the animals that we've been testing our viral vector system in and had just an enormous increase in the antibody response. So that's very exciting and I'm propelling our team, which is led by Luke Vandenberghe, from Mass Pioneer, creating the vector in his laboratory. So, we think we will be in a position to ask the FDA to allow us to go into human beings by the end of June. We would hopefully then be in the clinic by late July. And we would have answers as to the first response from the antibodies within about a four to six-week period. So, we think that we will have good evidence that we are producing a vaccine that has real benefit by the first month or two of fall. All of that has to be approved by the FDA. So when I say we think that we still have a very important step, which is to go through the FDA and get approval for the plan we put forward. But that's the plan we're working on right now, John.
[King:] Dr. Freeman, appreciate your expertise and insights. And I wish you the best of luck in the very important weeks ahead.
[Freeman:] Thank you so much. Appreciate the opportunity to be on your show.
[King:] Thank you, sir. Coming up for us, a violent arrest in New York now adding questions about how law enforcement, other communities should enforce social distancing orders.