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Crozet BioPharma Announces $10.8 Million Agreement to Support Development of Single Dose Nipah Virus Vaccine Through Partnership with Public Health Vaccines
The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) has granted PHV funding to support pre-clinical development, manufacturing, clinical advancement through Phase 2, and establishment of an investigational stockpile of the vaccine candidate worth up to $43.6 million. PHV, a Cambridge-based biotechnology firm, has partnered with Crozet to provide core technical and strategic development services to the program.
Crozet, in collaboration with PHV, will engage its expert team of vaccine developers and manage a coalition of partners to develop the rVSV-Nipah vaccine. This includes design and oversight of critical technical elements of the development program including manufacturing and quality control of the vaccine, nonclinical safety and efficacy studies, tests for measuring immune responses, and Phase 1 and 2 clinical trials.
Dr. Thomas Monath, Managing Partner and Chief Scientific Officer at Crozet Biopharma said: "The Crozet team spent several years developing the successful rVSV-ZEBOV Ebola vaccine. That expertise will greatly facilitate advancement of the rVSV-Nipah vaccine. We look forward to our partnership with PHV, support from CEPI, and the opportunity to work with an extraordinary coalition of experts to develop a rVSV-Nipah vaccine candidate."
The vaccine candidate was developed by Dr. Heinz Feldmann within the Laboratory of Virology, Division of Intramural Research, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, and has been licensed to PHV by NIAID. The recombinant vesicular stomatitis virus (rVSV) vaccine candidate expressing a type of Nipah-virus protein (known as glycoprotein G) is designed to induce protection against the virus after a single dose.
Nipah virus, a bat-borne virus, can spread to humans and cause brain inflammation and pneumonia with a high mortality. Epidemics of the disease have emerged during the last 20 years in India, Southeast Asia and the western Pacific.
Dr. D. Gray Heppner, Crozet's Chief Medical Officer said: "Nipah virus infection causes a dreadful disease for which there is no treatment. The Crozet team believes all people at risk of Nipah disease deserve the protection of a safe, effective vaccine."
About the Nipah Virus Vaccine
The vaccine candidate is a live, attenuated recombinant vesicular stomatitis virus (rVSV) vector that expresses the glycoprotein (G) of the Nipah virus (Bangladesh strain). The rVSV construct also contains the ZEBOV glycoprotein GP, which is required for receptor-mediated viral entry. PHV will work closely with a team of industry experts from Crozet Biopharma to develop the vaccine candidate. Ology Bioservices will develop and scale-up the manufacturing process for clinical use of the vaccine and will generate an investigational stockpile of the vaccine candidate for use in the event of a Nipah outbreak as part of a clinical trial.
Resilience (National Resilience), a biomanufacturing company, acquired Ology Bioservices (Ology Bio), a privately held company that reportedly also specializes in biologic drug substance manufacturing from early stage through commercial products.
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