The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases awarded Soligenix Inc. of Princeton a $1.5 million small business innovation research grant to support the manufacturing, formulation, and characterization of COVID-19 and Ebola vaccine candidates in conjunction with the CoVaccine HT adjuvant.
The award will also support immune characterization of this adjuvant that has unique potency and compatibility with lyophilization, or water removal, strategies to enable thermostabilization of subunit vaccines, which elicit an immune response due to the fragment of the pathogen they contain.
NIAID is part of the National Institutes of Health.
CiVax is the company’s heat-stable subunit vaccine candidate for the prevention of COVID-19. Ongoing collaborations between Soligenix and the University of Hawaii at Manoa associate professor Dr. Axel Lehrer have demonstrated the feasibility of developing a highly immunogenic vaccine for COVID-19, the company said Monday. Essential attributes of a vaccine successful in controlling the COVID-19 pandemic are believed to include the ability to rapidly stimulate a Th1/Th2 balanced antibody response, raising significant virus neutralizing antibodies, as well as induce potent cell-mediated immunity. According to the company, previous indicates that CoVaccine has these critical characteristics; and unlike other vaccine candidates that have logistical challenges because they’re required to be kept at extremely cold temperates (in some cases less than -70 degrees C), the underlying technology platform has demonstrated the ability to vaccines which are stable up to temperatures as high as +40 degrees C.
The $1.5 million grant enables detailed immunogenicity evaluation of CoVaccine in the presence of either the SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein antigen or the Zaire ebolavirus glycoprotein antigen in both mice and non-human primates, and will significantly enhance both vaccine programs.
It also will enable re-initiation of key CoVaccine manufacturing processes, according to Soligenix.
“This SBIR grant award will further advance our studies with the CoVaccine adjuvant, as well as our CiVax and filovirus vaccine programs. We remain dedicated to progressing our Public Health Solutions business segment and look forward to accelerating our CiVax program in particular with this funding,” said Soligenix President and CEO Dr. Christopher Schaber in a prepared statement.
NIAID support is being provided through SBIR grant number 1 R44 AI157593-01.
