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news.The International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) and Lentigen have formed a collaboration to design a preventive AIDS vaccine based on Lentigen's technology. The candidate AIDS vaccine will be devised to safely simulate biological aspects of HIV infection and tested first in pre-clinical studies as part of an initial 18-month agreement.
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The collaboration is a part of IAVI’s Innovation Fund, a program launched to support the application of novel and unconventional technologies to AIDS vaccine design and development. The fund has an initial three-year commitment of $10m, half of which is financed by a $5m grant to IAVI from the Gates Foundation.
The Innovation Fund is a component of IAVI’s research and development infrastructure, which includes a global network of labs, three international research consortia comprised of HIV researchers and a network of clinical research centers and supporting programs.
According to the agreement, Lentigen will initially develop a proof-of-concept version of the vaccine against the Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (SIV), so that its safety and ability to provoke an immune response can be evaluated in an animal model. The results of this first set of experiments will determine how the parties move ahead with the development and testing of an HIV version of this candidate vaccine.
Dr Boro Dropulic, chief scientific officer and a founder of Lentigen, said: “We believe that this prototype vaccine has the potential to generate the protective immune responses seen with experimental live-attenuated viruses, but without their pathogenic effects.”
Hansi Dean, director of new alliances and initiatives at IAVI, said: “Lentigen’s approach builds on promising technology from the gene delivery field applied to the challenge of HIV vaccine development. Biotechs like Lentigen can play a key role in advancing AIDS vaccine research, and we are excited to partner with the company on the development of a candidate that could advance the field forward.”
Tim Ravenscroft, CEO of Lentigen and a scientist with extensive experience in the field of HIV research, said: “The development of an effective AIDS vaccine would drastically alter the course of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.”
IAVI’s Innovation Fund targets primarily small- and medium-sized biotechnology companies, proactively seeking out and financing nascent technologies that could help solve some of the major technical and scientific hurdles facing AIDS vaccine science, and that could ultimately lead to the development of new vaccines.
Lentigen is a privately owned biotechnology company focused on the development of lentiviral vector technology for a range of therapeutic, vaccine, and bioproduction applications. Lentigen is a collaborative company, co-developing Lentiviral vector-based products across a spectrum of bench to clinical applications. Collaborations include The National Institutes of Health, PATH, Expression Therapeutics, Epixis SA, The University of Pennsylvania, The University of Pittsburgh and The US Army.