Using the grant funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), EpiVax will develop a pro-inflammatory and non-tolerogenic HIV vaccine delivery system based on the dendritic cell targeting anti-DEC-205 antibody.
EpiVax believes that regulatory T-cell epitopes contained in anti-DEC-205 promote a tolerogenic reaction that is only overcome through the coadministration of clinically dangerous or untested non-specific immuno-stimulators. This idea is based on EpiVax’s discovery of a set of natural regulatory T-cell epitopes derived from human immunoglobulins that induce tolerance by stimulating regulatory T cells.
EpiVax has already verified experimentally that these epitopes cause antigen-specific expansion of regulatory T cells and suppress inflammatory immune responses.
Annie Groot, CEO of EpiVax, said: “The recent failure of the investigational HIV vaccine tested in the Phase II clinical trial known as Step is a strong indicator that more traditional approaches to vaccine design and delivery are simply not going to work for HIV. That’s why the EpiVax brand of ‘outside the box’ thinking was funded; the world is looking for safer, more effective ways to prevent AIDS.”