The grant comes from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, of the US Department of Defense.
Conventional vaccine development and manufacturing methods require years of effort after the emergence of a new pathogen for production of even a single dose for testing.
Current DNA vaccine development and manufacturing processes allow initial production of vaccines in as little as three months after selection of a gene sequence associated with a pathogen, but quantities are limited by the batch-processing capacity of available manufacturing equipment.
Vical intends to use the funding to evaluate new methods that would dramatically reduce the manufacturing time and increase yields, allowing production of millions of doses in a matter of weeks.
“New approaches to vaccine manufacturing are clearly needed to rapidly respond to an explosive emergence of a natural or weaponized infectious disease threat,” said Dr David Kaslow, Vical’s chief scientific officer. “Our goal in these feasibility studies is to demonstrate that vaccines can be manufactured in the short timeframes required to stem a new epidemic. DNA vaccines provide that potential.”