The Infectious Disease Research Institute (IDRI) of Seattle, WA will be teaming up with biopharmaceutical company Soligenix to develop biodefense vaccines.
The new collaboration will utilize IDRI’s potent synthetic adjuvants in conjunction with Soligenix’s proprietary subunit proteins and thermostability platform (known as ThermoVax™). The work will be partially supported by Soligenix’s existing $9.4 Million grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) for advancing vaccine thermostability.
Synthetic adjuvants are immunologically active compounds that are added to vaccines to aid in the induction of enhanced protective immune responses. IDRI has state of the art expertise in developing and formulating a range of adjuvants that have proven capable of enhancing the level and breadth of cellular and humoral immune responses to a variety of vaccine antigens.
The combination of these technologies has the potential to result in vaccines with robust characteristics for long-term stability and rapid onset of protective immunity, desired features of vaccines that would be stockpiled for emergency use.
“IDRI is enthusiastic about working with Soligenix to support their efforts in developing their anthrax and ricin vaccine candidates, and are highly confident that IDRI’s adjuvant technology can help build effective vaccines,” said Darrick Carter PhD, IDRI’s Vice President of Adjuvant Technology. “These new candidate vaccines could be the critical solution in providing protection to people in the event there is a bioterror threat from the release of anthrax or ricin toxins.”
Full Press Release: PRNewswire