VGX scientists created four synthetic consensus DNA vaccines to protect against a lethal Vietnamese H5N1strain of avian influenza in mice. One of the vaccines resulted in complete protection of mice from death and illness of the challenge while 2 others had 60-80% protective effects. All of the vaccines were delivered using VGX’s proprietary CELLECTRA DNA Delivery Device. CELLECTRA is a novel adaptive electroporation device developed by VGX. The avian flu data was presented by Dr Ruxandra Draghia-Akli, VGX vice president, Immune Therapeutics Research.
Separately at the opening plenary session, professor David Weiner of the University of Pennsylvania, conference chairman and a co-founder of VGX, presented new data showing extensive T-cell mediated immune responses to VGX’s HIV vaccine candidates delivered with CELLECTRA in non-human primates.
The data revealed that the monkeys immunized with VGX vaccines displayed HIV-specific T cell responses as much as 10-20 fold greater than those reported in the literature using other vaccine modalities.
VGX plans to conduct further preclinical studies for both the HIV and Avian Flu vaccines, including the IND-enabling toxicology studies in 2007.