TremRx Inc.
Looking back to the future of vaccine development
This article was originally published in Start Up
Executive Summary
Fresh evidence that everything once fashionable eventually comes back into style is now provided by TremRx Inc., a Boston-based start-up intent on developing prophylactic and therapeutic vaccines. The company’s approach hinges on much the same method as the smallpox vaccine invented by Edward Jenner in the late 1700s. As Jenner did, TremRx anticipates its vaccines will be applied to a small area of abraded skin. The company plans to deliver, via this abrasion in the epidermis, a live Vaccinia virus that can infect, but not replicate, in skin cells. Used this way as a vector to carry antigens, the method has been shown to stimulate production of protective immune-system cells called T-Resident Effector Memory cells, or TREMs.