Biotech receives grant from Innovate UK to progress its universal flu vaccine programme

Emergex Vaccines Holding (Emergex) — a biotechnology company — has been awarded with a grant of £979,318 from Innovate UK to progress its universal flu vaccine programme through preclinical development.

The grant will be used to cover 70% of the development costs for the flu vaccine programme that will last two years. Additionally, it will be used to complete preclinical toxicology and validation studies and the manufacturing of the vaccine in accordance with current good manufacturing practice (cGMP). This will result in clinical batches of the vaccine which are ready for Phase I clinical testing in the first half of 2020.

Professor Thomas Rademacher, co-founder, CEO and CSO at Emergex commented: “This Innovate UK grant provides endorsement of our flu vaccine programme and reinforces our belief that an innovative approach, using the very latest technologies, could help protect the public from this inevitable epidemic or pandemic health threat.”

The company’s universal flu vaccine has been designed to target common components of the flu virus in all strains. Therefore, it should be suitable to target the outbreak of new forms of the flu virus as it moves from animals to humans, which can cause pandemics.

Completely synthetic, the vaccine delivers highly conserved immunogenic peptide fragments from the flu virus to antigen presenting cells in the skin, eliciting a strong and long-lasting T-cell immune response.

Further to its universal flu vaccine, the company is developing a universal Flavivirus vaccine which is cross reactive against Zika, Dengue and Yellow Fever, and a universal Filovirus vaccine which is cross reactive against Ebola and Marburg virus.