The $1,084,824 grant is a second-phase Small Business Innovative Research grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is part of the National Institutes of Health. This builds on two previous phase-one SBIR awards the two laboratories received to generate reagents for studying infectious diseases like the flu or coronavirus.

Reagents are molecules that make it easier for scientists to test what is happening in test animals’ immune systems when they are infected with the flu — and what happens when they get treatment or a vaccine. In this case, the reagents are proteins, specifically, monoclonal antibodies. After the reagents are created and validated, Ampersand sells them to the scientific community to be used in more research.

This second phase will be a two-year study digging deeper into testing some of these molecules.

Deb Brown, principal investigator at Saranac Lake-based Trudeau Institute, said what they produce will be a tool for the whole influenza research community.

A map on the wall of an office in Ampersand Biosciences in Lake Clear has pushpins showing where the seven-employee biotech company’s products have been sold around the world. (Provided photo — Tori Race)

The flu causes close to 500,000 deaths annually worldwide. It’s a common viral disease, known for causing lethargy, difficulty in breathing and high fevers. According to the World Health Organization, there are around 1 billion cases of the flu worldwide annually, with 3 to 5 million causing severe illness. According to the WHO, 99% of flu-related deaths are in children under the age of 5, mostly in developing countries. In the United States, the flu causes around 36,000 deaths each year. Here, 90% of these deaths are in people 65 or older.

Brown’s influenza lab at Trudeau Institute already studies the disease in mice. Now, they’ll use ferrets.

Ferrets are better than mice for researching influenza for several reasons. For one, ferrets have lungs which are more similar to human lungs than mice. Also, ferrets have a much stronger sneeze reflex than mice. This allows them to study the spread of the disease and vaccine responses better, because infected ferrets can transmit the flu to each other.

Dr. Tori Race is the principal investigator at Lake-Clear based Ampersand Biosciences. Ampersand specializes in the development of reagents and sells them in kits.

A $596,519 grant in 2020 led to the development of 14 different reagents to detect “biomarkers” in animals. Biomarkers are molecules in blood and tissue which signal infection. These reagents are currently being sold by Ampersand to support research on diseases like influenza and COVID-19. This is the first time these molecules have been available to the research community.

The first phase took a “tremendous amount of work,” Race said.

Part of the second phase is to make these reagent tools available for more researchers. Currently, they are used in a specialized and expensive machines. Now, the laboratories are working to make these tools usable with less expensive and more common machines.

Though the tools they’re producing can’t be used in human studies, the lessons learned can be adapted to apply to human studies.

Brown said one of the things the researchers will use the reagents for is to see if there’s less of an inflammatory response, or cytokine storm, when treated with vaccines or therapeutic drugs.

A cytokine storm is an extreme immune response to infection with rapid inflammation. It is a cause of severe and fatal cases of the flu or COVID-19. Essentially, the immune system is overreacting to the infection, which inhibits breathing.

“Researchers are trying to develop therapeutics to combat this, so now we can test for that in these better animal models,” Brown said.

Brown’s work focuses on making flu vaccines more universal, to protect against many different strains of the illness, instead of just the one that’s around in a given year. For all the scientific advancement in vaccines, she said we still don’t have good vaccines for the flu. Strategies which worked for diseases like small pox, measles and mumps don’t work for influenza because it changes and mutates so rapidly.

She is interested in looking at the bodily immune response to the virus, and using that knowledge to develop better vaccines. Part of this new grant is meant to use new methods that can detect both the type of immune cell in the lung, as well as that cell’s function.

“Can we design a vaccine that acts more like our own immune response?” Brown asked, “to provide protection against more than just the viruses that are circulating year-to-year.”

She said it feels great to provide brand-new information and research for the whole immunology community. Not everyone has the ability to do research with ferrets, so others rely on places like Trudeau Institute to provide that research.

“There’s an immense sense of pride, honestly,” Race said. “Whenever a kit is ordered we celebrate.”

They have a world map on the wall of their offices and place a push-pin on cities wherever they’ve sold kits. So far, they’ve sold more than 70 ferret multiplex kits.

“While it seems modest, these sales mean a lot to our small business of seven people,” Race said. “Any additional minds we have working on the development of vaccines and therapeutics in this important area, the better.”

The National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are some of Ampersand’s biggest customers.

Brown said it’s neat to have a bio-tech hub with Trudeau, Ampersand and Bionique Testing Laboratories all in the Saranac Lake area. Race said they collaborate with Trudeau as often when they can.

Undergraduate students from Hamilton College just started helping Brown with her work on mouse influenza models this week.