Vical is proceeding with the development of the RapidResponse platform under the third year of grant funding, awarded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).
The company has completed second-year milestones under a three-year, $6 million grant awarded in 2007. Now it is advancing with the development of a DNA vaccine manufacturing process, to produce several million doses of vaccines in a matter of days.
The RapidResponse DNA vaccine manufacturing platform is intended to reduce the time required to develop, manufacture and deploy vaccines against emerging diseases, during the early stages of an infectious outbreak.
The RapidResponse system is designed to allow extremely rapid and large-scale production of DNA vaccines with low capital requirements. It is ideally suited to enable an immediate response against emerging diseases affecting large populations, such as H1N1 or H5N1 pandemic influenza or severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).