A UK biotech working on a pioneering a new approach to developing vaccines for infectious diseases has been awarded a grant of £979,318 by Innovate UK.
Emergex Vaccines says the funds will help fuel progress of its universal flu vaccine programme through preclinical development.
The vaccine is designed to target components of the influenza virus that are common to all strains, and will therefore also be suitable to target the outbreak of a new flu pandemic caused by the emergence of a novel form of the virus at the time it moves from an animal species into humans, according to the firm.
The vaccine is 100 percent synthetic and delivers “highly conserved immunogenic peptide fragments from the flu virus to antigen presenting cells in the skin, eliciting a strong and long-lasting T-cell immune response,” it said.
The grant should cover 70 percent of the cost of developing the flu vaccine programme over a period of two years, and will be used to complete preclinical toxicology and validation studies and the manufacturing of the vaccine, so that clinical batches are ready for Phase I clinical testing in the first half of 2020.
“This Innovate UK grant provides endorsement of our flu vaccine programme and reinforces our belief that an innovative approach, using the very latest technologies, could help protect the public from this inevitable epidemic or pandemic health threat,” noted Professor Thomas Rademacher, co-founder, chief executive and chief scientific officer at Emergex.
