Lipoxen, a UK-based developer of drug and vaccine delivery systems, has received funding to apply its ImuXen technology to enhance the performance of malaria vaccine candidates.
The PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative, a program of the non-profit organization, PATH, will provide funding for the project. Scientists from the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a component of the US National Institutes of Health, will provide expertise to the project, which is anticipated to report results in mid-2010.
The project will apply Lipoxen’s patented technology with a view to improving the ultimate performance and efficacy of malaria vaccines. Lipoxen will be responsible for the development of an optimized malaria vaccine formulation, while NIAID scientists will be responsible for evaluating its activity in a relevant preclinical model.
Lipoxen said that its proprietary ImuXen technology is based on the use of natural substances found in the human body (liposomes) to entrap the active ingredients (a malaria antigen in this project) to ensure their direct delivery to the appropriate cells of the immune system, thereby enhancing the effectiveness of vaccines by generating strong and broadly based immune responses.
The resulting immune responses are expected to be much stronger and more rapid than with vaccines delivered by conventional means. The company’s liposomal formulations are also expected to minimize the side effects of vaccination as a result of the containment and slow release of the active materials.
Scott Maguire, CEO of Lipoxen, said: The scourge that is malaria causes a death every 30 seconds in Africa alone. With funding from PATH we will explore whether our technology is suitable for malaria vaccines. The decision by NIAID, a world-leading biomedical research organization, to participate in this project will unquestionably accelerate this exploration.
Lipoxen has other globally important vaccine candidates in its pipeline – including one against HIV. The company is also working alongside the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative on the improved delivery of HIV vaccine candidates. We also have a novel influenza vaccine candidate in development that has recently produced positive results in preclinical studies.