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news.Dynavax Technologies has been awarded a two-year $3.25 million grant from the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Disease, a division of the National Institutes of Health, to continue development of a universal influenza vaccine for controlling seasonal and emerging pandemic flu strains.
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The National Institutes of Health (NIH), has been funding Dynavax’s research since 2003, which focuses on a new vaccine that incorporates a second- generation TLR9 agonist and the conserved influenza antigen nucleoprotein (NP). The new grant, U01AI074578, is directed toward advancing preclinical research into IND-enabling studies and product development.
Gary Van Nest, vice president, preclinical research, said: “The grant is another important endorsement of our approach. We believe that NP represents a unique vaccine component that when conjugated to our second-generation TLR9 agonist can address the limitations of seasonal flu vaccines as well as represent an important advance in the development of a universal vaccine to protect against a pandemic flu outbreak. With this grant, and based on strong preclinical data, we are planning to move into clinical development in 2008.”
Dr Van Nest also revealed that in mice, its novel vaccine can provide strong, cross-strain protective immunity and indicated that mouse and primate models had shown that the novel vaccine may be used in conjunction with standard vaccine to enhance immunogenicity and provide dose sparing of traditional flu vaccine components.
Dynavax is also using another conserved influenza antigen, the extracellular domain of matrix protein 2 linked to a second-generation TLR9 agonist to generate broadly reactive antibody responses against influenza.