Cranbury, NJ, October 14, 2008 - VaxInnate Corporation, a biotechnology company pioneering breakthrough technology to develop novel seasonal and pandemic influenza vaccines, will present Phase I data demonstrating that its universal influenza vaccine candidate was safe and immunogenic at the 48th ICAAC/46th IDSA meeting in Washington, DC this month.

 

48th Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy/ 46th Infectious Diseases Society of America (ICAAC/IDSA)

Date:  Sunday, Oct. 26, 2008
Time:  11:15 am-12:15 pm ET
Location:  Exposition Hall, Walter E. Washington Convention Center
Session # / Title:  106/Influenza Vaccines: Adults
Presentation Number:  G-1192
Presentation Title:  "A Multicenter, Double-Blind, Randomized, Escalating Dose-Ranging Study to Investigate the Safety and Immunogenicity in Healthy Adults of VAX102 (STF2.4xM2e), an M2e-flagellin Fusion Influenza Vaccine"

 

Study results will be presented by Christine Turley, MD, the study's primary investigator and director of clinical trials and clinical research at the Sealy Center for Vaccine Development, University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) in Galveston, and David Taylor, MD, VaxInnate's chief medical officer.

UTMB and VaxInnate researchers are collaborating on a manuscript about the trial results for submission to a peer-reviewed journal.

The Phase I study was supported by a $9.5 million grant awarded to UTMB by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, for better control of influenza epidemics in the developing world.

VaxInnate's Approach
A universal flu vaccine would offer protection against all strains of seasonal and pandemic influenza A without needing to be renewed annually. While universal vaccination has been proposed to improve vaccination coverage and prevent disease, there are no universal vaccines at this time. Nor is there a means of developing and producing the volume of vaccine necessary to implement universal flu vaccine recommendations.

VaxInnate's universal flu vaccine candidate is designed to target the ectodomain of the M2 protein (M2e), an ion channel protein found on the surface of influenza A viruses. M2e is the most highly conserved surface protein of the virus, thereby eliminating the need for epidemiologists to identify and predict strain variants that emerge from year to year, as they must now.

VaxInnate's approach to developing and producing flu vaccines is based upon a proprietary combination of toll-like receptor (TLR) mediated immune enhancement and recombinant bacterial production of vaccine antigen. This proprietary technology could significantly reduce the time required to produce supplies of flu vaccine sufficient to meet national and global needs.

About VaxInnate
VaxInnate is a privately-held biotechnology company focused on developing novel, proprietary vaccines for both seasonal and pandemic influenza. The company's Toll-like receptor (TLR) technology platform allows for genetic engineering of the vaccines using recombinant DNA techniques. This technology physically links TLR agonists to vaccine antigens, which allows the vaccine to trigger an adaptive immune response. VaxInnate is using its TLR platform technology to enhance the immunogenicity of a series of antigens which will be combined into a number of different influenza products. The technology platform is also being investigated for development of vaccines for other diseases. For more information on VaxInnate, please visit  http://www.vaxinnate.com.