Profectus BioSciences, Inc., a technology based vaccine company devoted to the treatment and prevention of chronic viral diseases, today announced the award of a Fast Track SBIR from the Division of AIDS, National Institutes of Health for $3.1M to support the development of the Company's Transition State Vaccine (TSV) technology for a prophylactic HIV Vaccine. This new award builds upon the $1.3M that the Company has also received through collaborative grants awarded to Dr. Robert Gallo, Director of the Institute of Human Virology (IHV) of the University of Maryland School of Medicine, with his co-workers Drs. George Lewis and Anthony DeVico from the National Cancer Institute and other groups. Profectus BioSciences is dedicated to harnessing the immune system to treat and prevent viral diseases and cancers through the delivery of proprietary prime/boost vaccines.
“Awards such as these are central to our ability to pursue an effective prophylactic vaccine against HIV.”
Originally developed at the IHV, the TSV strategy targets the adaptive immune response to the most protected portions of HIV envelope spikes that are considered the "Achilles heel" of all HIV isolates. The TSV is being developed as a subunit protein and also for delivery utilizing the Company's plasmid DNA and recombinant Vesicular Stomatitis Virus vaccine vectors. Thus far, the TSV approach has generated significant protective responses in several non-human primate models for HIV. This data was presented at the 2010 AIDS Vaccine Conference in Atlanta, GA. John Eldridge, Chief Scientific Officer of Profectus BioSciences, commented, "Awards such as these are central to our ability to pursue an effective prophylactic vaccine against HIV."
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