PROVIDENCE – EpiVax Inc. said Tuesday it has received a $458,000, two-year grant to develop a universal influenza vaccine.
“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 EpiVax, which is based in the Capital City’s Knowledge District.
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“The world is looking for faster, safer and more effective ways to prevent the spread of flu. We are especially aware of the need for new technologies to accelerate production of flu vaccines in a pandemic scenario.”
The award will allow EpiVax to develop an epitope-based influenza vaccine that “primes” conventional influenza vaccines and can stand on its own in a conventional vaccine shortage, the company said in a news release.
EpiVax will apply its 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 company said.
Vaccine development will follow EpiVax’s well-established genomes-to-vaccine approach, it said. EpiVax’s computational tools identify T cell epitopes of interest that are experimentally validated in vitro and in vivo; the epitopes provide the information needed to trigger a protective immune response.
The company is currently developing epitope-based vaccines against poxviruses, tularemia, TB, H.pylori and HIV.
Influenza is estimated to cause between 250,000 to 500,000 deaths worldwide every year. Vaccines against a potential influenza pandemic are not yet available, according to the news release said, citing information from the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health.
The grant was awarded through the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases division.
