Tag: Altieri

This is week six of the stay-at-home order in Pennsylvania and Darien Sutton, associate director of Communications & Marketing, caught up again with President and CEO Dario C. Altieri, M.D., for their second virtual chat about what’s going on with the COVID-19 emergency.

Sutton: What’s up with the buzz cut?

Altieri: This? Oh, this is my homemade pandemic cut. According to the Pennsylvania Department of Health, we will need fewer than 50 new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people to reopen things in Philadelphia. And not just for one day, but for two weeks straight. Currently, we are at about 400, a long way away. So, I figured it will be a while before any barber shop reopens and I took matters into my own hands. Literally. Plus, the look reminds me of the good old days in the 27th Artillery Regiment.

Sutton: Speaking of the pandemic instead of your looks, what are we seeing right now?

Altieri: The numbers continue to be worrisome. Unfortunately, the U.S. is the world epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic with over 900,000 confirmed cases and more than 54,000 deaths. About half of those numbers are in two states, New York and New Jersey. We have heard a million times about flattening the curve. The curve has flattened but the cases have not yet come down. Right now, it seems more like a plateau, not dissimilar from what European countries have experienced.

Sutton: And yet, we hear talks about reopening the country, restarting the economy and going back to some sort of normalcy. Are we ready to do that?

Altieri: Clearly, one size doesn’t fit all: Certain parts of the country have seen relatively few cases. Others have done very well at containing the outbreak. Others yet may not have even peaked. There are still a lot of things that we don’t know about the virus and how it spreads. I think we should be very, very cautious at what we do next and how we do it. If you had told me two months ago how devastating COVID-19 would be, I would not have believed it. I am stunned that as a society we seem to tolerate an average of 2,000 COVID-19 deaths a day.

Sutton: And talking about the unknowns, what are the most important things that we should figure out before we reopen?

Altieri: First, we still don’t know what the impact of asymptomatic spreading is. This is the scenario of someone next to you on a commuter train or in line at a grocery store, who is not sneezing, coughing or anything and yet is spreading the virus. Earlier data from Wuhan suggested that this kind of spreading is rare, maybe around 1%. But more recent studies suggest that the number is actually much, much bigger, maybe even in the high 30%. And, second, how protective are the antibodies against COVID-19 that we find in people after an infection? A study from New York suggests that more than 15% of people who never complained of COVID-19 symptoms actually have antibodies against it. This says that the virus has been with us for much longer than we thought. But does it also mean that those people are protected against (re)infection?

Sutton: Moving on to Wistar now, did anything happen since the last time we spoke?

Altieri: Oh, not much. We simply made history. Again. David Weiner’s recombinant DNA vaccine against COVID-19 entered clinical trials this month. This is only the second vaccine against COVID-19 that is being tested in the U.S. Accrual has been brisk, and the study is apparently on track to successfully complete enrollment of about forty healthy volunteers by the end of April.

Sutton: Why is that making history?

Altieri: Well, David and his collaborators at Inovio moved the COVID-19 vaccine from design to FDA-approved clinical testing in 83 days. This is breakneck speed, I think unprecedented for drug discovery and development. Second, David has accumulated impressive preclinical results suggesting that his vaccine generates a robust immune response in laboratory animals. Of course, we need to see what happens in humans, but the initial data suggest that the vaccine will awaken our immune system against COVID-19. Phase 2 efficacy trials will tell whether this translates in protection against the virus.

Sutton: This is clinical development 101. Since Wistar doesn’t have a hospital, how can Wistar support the advancement of the vaccine?

Altieri: We have a world-class infrastructure of people and facilities at Wistar that will be instrumental to advance this vaccine candidate through the process. We have also received an incredible outpouring of support and generosity from so many people to finance these and other research efforts focused on COVID-19. This has allowed us to move really fast and in multiple research directions creating amazing new collaborations, which is typical of how Wistar approaches science.

Sutton: Certainly, strong reasons to be upbeat in face of the current bleakness. Any other reason to look up?

Altieri: Absolutely. Gronk reunited with TB12 in Tampa. Watch out NFC South.

Dr. Dario Altieri, Wistar president and CEO, gets candid about our response as a country to the COVID-19 pandemic, and how the Institute is advancing scientific solutions to protect those at the frontlines.

The streets of University City Philadelphia are empty, few cars drive around and the Penn Campus is eerily deserted, but The Wistar Institute remains open. Designated as a “life-sustaining” business in Governor Wolf’s recent order, the oldest independent research institute in the U.S. is adjusting to life in the era of COVID-19 and lives up to its century-old mission of putting research to work for human health. Darien Sutton, Media Relations & Communications manager, caught up with Dr. Dario C. Altieri, Wistar president and CEO, for a “virtual” fireside chat about his take on the coronavirus crisis and what Wistar can do to help.

Sutton: I checked with Pete, our director of Facilities, and there are about 70 people coming to Wistar any given day since we started social distancing. It appears you are one of them. How does it feel?

Altieri: It feels great. Being here every day says that we are doing the job that we are supposed to do, and people expect us to do. Plus, since we implemented social distancing, no in-person meetings and no gatherings, I got to ditch the suit and tie for jeans and hoodie, and that feels even better.

Sutton: What’s going on with COVID-19? Why is this so much more dangerous than, say, the flu?

Altieri: I am not sure we know everything about this particular coronavirus strain. Clinical data, mostly coming out of the Wuhan experience, suggest that it spreads more efficiently than the flu and has a higher case fatality rate. It also seems that our own response to the infection is different: we seem to generate a far less robust antiviral transcriptional signature. Regardless, most people have mild or no symptoms. The problem is that a small percentage of patients develop acute respiratory failure, and, unfortunately, can have a very grim prognosis. This is the worst-case scenario that we are seeing in the national news: tens of thousands of patients with acute respiratory failure flooding ERs around the country and major metropolitan areas.

Sutton: Are we prepared?

Altieri: No, not at all. We should have done a better job studying more closely what was going on in Asian countries in January. We’ve missed both the good — how to control the spread of the virus, because it can be done, and the bad — how acute and deadly the most severe cases can be. This is not about politics, but it appears that we, as a society, have underestimated the threat, didn’t prepare with reliable testing, and didn’t take seriously the chance that our health system could become overwhelmed. A health system that even under “normal” circumstances must run at close to full capacity. It’s unacceptable that we, as a nation, are at the point of scrambling to find masks and gloves.

Sutton: Okay, that’s the bad news. Is there good news?

Altieri: Well, there are a lot of people working the numbers right now. There is still no approved drug or vaccine, but a lot of clinical trials have opened around the world. They are testing different strategies to shut down how the virus gets in the cell, prevent it from copying its genome or alleviate the acute cytokine response that seems to drive a negative outcome in patients with respiratory failure. And then of course there are vaccine trials that launched with different approaches. I am hopeful that something will hit, and soon. It doesn’t have to be a magic bullet, but something meaningful to protect those on the front lines and the most at-risk population.

Sutton: What is Wistar’s part in all this?

Altieri: For a century, we have been at the forefront of vaccine research, and this is no different now. The efforts in our Vaccine & Immunotherapy Center tackle many aspects of the COVID-19 emergency and Dr. David Weiner’s DNA-based vaccine is scheduled to enter trial right here in Philadelphia later this month. Of course, we don’t know if any of these will work and make a difference in people’s lives. But I cannot begin to tell you how proud I am of this work, not just of the scientists but of everyone who is here to support them. It is this sense of community, which is all about the science, that makes Wistar special.

Sutton: But Wistar is almost empty, can we really do it?

Altieri: Of course, we can. Our top priority is to make sure that everyone here is safe and healthy. And stays that way. In just a week, we reconfigured the entire organization to work remotely and everyone is chipping in, things are getting done with the same pace, efficiency and passion as ever. It is the best support we can give to our laboratories that are racing to defeat COVID-19.

Sutton: Any last parting thoughts?

Altieri: At some point, things will get better. I don’t know when or how many good people around the world COVID-19 will take. But we will get past the critical point. I just hope that when we finally do, we will not go back to live our lives like nothing happened. I hope we will remember our errors and shortcomings and learn from them. So that we can make the right investments, support the science, develop the medicines of the future and protect our communities. Maybe it’s time to build one less aircraft carrier and a few more hospitals. If there is one thing that we learned from this spring of 2020 is that our lives can be upended very quickly and very dramatically. We just need to be better prepared. For when the next pandemic comes.