EpiVax Gets NIH Grant to Develop Universal Flu Vaccine

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

GoLocalProv Business Team

EpiVax, Inc, a leader in the field of computational immunology, has just announced that it has received a grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to develop a universal influenza vaccine. NIAID will provide EpiVax with $458,000 over two years for the proposed research.

“There is an urgent unmet need for an influenza vaccine with greater potency and wider application to diverse flu viruses, that can also be developed more rapidly than conventional influenza vaccines," said Dr. Annie De Groot, CEO and CSO of the company. "That’s why the EpiVax brand of 'outside the box' thinking was funded."

"The world is looking for faster, safer and more effective ways to prevent the spread of flu,” she said. “We are especially aware of the need for new technologies to accelerate production of flu vaccines in a pandemic scenario.”

The science at stake

Using the grant funding from the NIH, EpiVax will apply its core immunoinformatics and immunology tools to identify and evaluate the ability of highly conserved hemagglutinin and neuraminidase T cell epitopes from H1N1 and H5N1

strains to elicit robust and durable immune responses in humans and in a murine model. EpiVax reasons that conserved influenza sequences, which are important to viral fitness, may also be of immunological value in that they may contribute to universal influenza vaccine design. The findings may lead to evaluation of alternative approaches to “priming” influenza immune responses, with the aim of attenuating illness and improving vaccine design for the next pandemic.

Toward a universal vaccine

The NIH award will enable EpiVax to develop an epitope-based influenza vaccine that “primes” conventional influenza vaccines and can stand on its own in a conventional vaccine shortage. Vaccine development will follow EpiVax’ well-established genomes-to-vaccine approach. EpiVax’ suite of computational tools identifies T cell epitopes of interest that are experimentally validated in vitro and in vivo. Epitopes provide the essential information needed to trigger a protective immune response. EpiVax is currently developing several epitope-based vaccines against poxviruses, tularemia, TB, H. pylori, and HIV.

According to the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH), “Influenza is estimated to cause three to five million cases and 250,000 to 500,000 deaths worldwide each year. Vaccines against seasonal influenza are made yearly to defend against currently circulating strains; however, vaccines against a potential influenza pandemic are not yet available. Investigating new vaccine technologies will benefit real-time response in a possible future pandemic, but there is no immediate solution yet.”