The 4^th annual Influenza Congress USA will have a Pitch & Partner session where you can pitch your technology to angels, VCs and big pharma. Pitch in the morning, partner in the afternoon.

What’s unique about this Pitch & Partner? The investors here are focused on flu vaccine investment. You won’t have to compete with a thousand other indications.

There will also be a preliminary workshop in which you will learn how to pitch your technology based on what investors are looking for.

Download the form, fill it out and send it back to us to qualify.

For more details contact Evelia Johnston either by phone – +1 646 619 1811 or email – evelia.johnston@terrapinn.com.

For more information, check out Influenza Congress USA.

Last April at the World Vaccine Congress, Dr Timothy Block from the Hepatitis B Foundation talked about the prevention of Hepatitis B and the unmet needs in prevention of the disease as well as on therapy.

350 million people in the world are chronically infected with HBV, mostly in Asia and Africa. HBV is major etiological factor for liver cancer.

HBV vaccine was successful in decreasing number of HBV cases to less than 50,000 cases/year. Chronic HBV dropped 10 fold in countries where the vaccination was implemented.

Challenges:

• 5 % of population is not responsive to the vaccine
• Development of resistant strains of viruses
• Multiple injections are needed
• Expensive
• There is still peri-natal transmission
• Waning immunity
• Vaccine requires cold storage

For more information, please download the presentation here

Last April Dr Joe Santangelo, COO at Inviragen shared some of the findings of their research about vaccine development for EV71 at the World Vaccine Congress 2012. 

Inviragen is developing a vaccine for Hand Foot and Mouth disease that is caused by the picorna virus, EV71, mostly in Asia. Virus can cross blood-brain barrier and can cause serious disease with meningitis, encephalitis also, cardiac disease. Children 1-5 years old are mostly affected. There is no vaccine or therapy for this disease.

The vaccine consists of EV71 inactivated whole viral particle, grown on Vero cells and formulated with Alum and is given in two doses one month apart. Phase 1 study was completed on a total of 90 healthy adults (45 low dose, 45 high dose), in Singapore last year. The safety and tolerability of the vaccine was very good with very mild adverse events in less than 25% of subjects. Immunogenicity data: 100% seroconversion at both doses. Will initiate Phase 2 study on 500-700 subjects later this year. Phase 3 will be done on around 2000 subjects.

Last April Dr Jessica Flechtner, VP Research at Genocea shared some of the findings of their Novel T cell antigen discovery technology at the World Vaccine Congress 2012.

Some key points raised on her presentation:

Dr Flechtner talked about Genocea and mentioned that the company was funded 5 years ago, and it has a unique platform rapidly discovering new T cell antigens. Entering clinic with HSV-2 vaccine this year. The company focus is on vaccine development for pathogens for which there is no vaccine.

Dr Flechtner highlighted that malaria vaccine development is an important project and it is based on the belief that T cell immune responses protect in the liver stage of the disease. Development of malaria vaccine goes into several phases:

• Human immune response profiling-in humans with effective, ineffective and deleterious immune response (in collaboration with the Navy)
• High throughput screening library creation; cloned library for up to 1000 genes (cloned 901, 84% expressed in E. Coli) and T cell identification from each subject by protein, compare frequency of responses in all donors
• In silico and in vivo validation (current phase)

Download here the full presentation

Enjoy!

Last April Dr Timothy Messitt from EpiVax delivered a presentation about the next wave of vaccine design on immune-derived vaccines at the World Vaccine Congress Washington.

See below the key highlights of his presentation:

Immunome-derived are T cell epitope driven vaccines that were developed in order to improve safety (limited potential for autoimmunity) and immunogenicity. Would like to take this into biodefense portfolio.

The focus is on T cell epitopes being able to predict T cell epitopes (Class 1 and 2 MHC binding) using EpiMatrix. The process goes through the following phases:

1. T cell epitope identification:

• CLUSTIMERS (identifies epitope clusters); potent epitops are promiscuous
• CONSERVATRIX finds conserved 9mers to be able to protect against as many strains possible
• Removal of cross-reactive epitopes

2. Expressing epitopes, usually by DNA plasmids followed with peptide boost; optimized whole proteins or VLPs with iso-optimized proteins

3. In vivo evaluation by HLA binding assays

Current vaccines: Burk/Tuly/MP, HIV/TB, Smallpox (VennVax) and others

The company is focusing on an accelerated vaccine approach focusing on biodefense and is planning to integrate all technologies in a web-based toolkit, iVax (currently beta testing it).

Check back here in a couple of days for the presentation.

Read the full story from the Washington Post.

The cow, which was 10 years old and could not stand, was sent to a facility that euthanizes sick or injured animals unfit for continued production or food supply. The animal was tested and found positive for an “atypical” form of the disease, thought to be caused by random mutation. Authorities claim there is no danger to the food supply, and there is no indication that any other animals from the faculty or the area were affected.

The mutation could be related to the type of food provided to the animal, but little is known about the factors that cause the disease. Only about .12% of cows in the US are tested for diseases, which stands in stark contrast to Japan and Europe, which test all cows over a certain age. The USDA prohibited a beef packer in Kansas from testing 100% of the animal in order to market the beef as mad cow-free, saying it would cause “instability in the market”. Despite the public concern, mad cow is a rare condition, with only 4 reported cases ever in the US.

 Read the full story from the Washington Post.

Learn more about issues of food safety at the World Animal Health Congress 2012!

The theme of this year is "Sustain Gains, Save Lives: Invest in Malaria". The idea is to promote awareness of the need to keep up investment in malaria to maintain the progress to fight against this disease.

Malaria has become a priority on the global agenda in the past decade, which has seen a 20% reduction in malaria deaths worldwide. Despite this progress, however, half of the world’s population is still at risk of malaria infection, which is responsible for more than 650,000 deaths a year. For an overview of the global international action taking place visit the World Malaria Day website.

The latest Research in Malaria Vaccine was also discussed at the Wold Vaccine Congress this April. Col Christian Ockenhouse Director of the Malaria Vaccine Development (USA Malaria Vaccine Program), presented the latest advancements in malaria vaccine production.

Col. Ockenhouse suggests that objectives for stopping malaria via a vaccine can be to prevent infection, lessen disease or block transmission.  He is working on vaccines that are aimed at preventing the parasite from entering the liver.  Whole organism and subunit-based vaccine approaches are being used. Read more about his presentation here

Click here to find out more about news and events taking place on World Malaria Day.

In its 6th consecutive year, World Vaccine Congress Asia has rapidly developed to become the central meeting point for Asia’s vaccine industry and international leaders. The congress brings together all the major vaccine stakeholders, through pharmas, biotechs, NGOs, research institutes, regulators and CDCs to discuss latest industry trends, business strategies and scientific developments in the global and Asian vaccine markets.

Download the brochure now to learn more about 2012’s exciting programme.

Dr Kurilla talked about the aspect of vaccination and how to enhance vaccination technologies. The current development path for this kind of vaccines was outlined including NIH scientific activities, transition partners and commercial development activities. Funding support is not adequate so NIAID developed the critical infrastructure including services.

The Public Health Emergency Medical Countermeasures Enterprise Review published in 2010 was discussed.

Focus on broad spectrum approaches including products, product enhancements (vaccine adjuvants, temperature stabilization, alternative delivery devices) and production platforms.

Good biodefense vaccine should have:

• Long shelf life
• Rapid onset of immunity
• Post exposure prophylaxis-minimal training necessary
  -surge capacity for production

Some Key points raised in the presentation:

Dr Dull  mentioned that the company goal was to design a broadly protective Meningococcal B vaccine. The capsule of Men B has huge homology with human neuronal tissue, so multicomponent approach looking into conserved protein components was adopted: The vaccine contains 3 fused protein antigens.

Nine clinical trial were conducted with 7938 subjects in EU, Canada and South America; involving multiple age groups with multiple schedules. Vaccine showed good immunogenicity in all trials.
Vaccine can be administered with other infant vaccines, as no interference was seen in several studies.

Tolerability and safety: the greatest problem was the appearance of fever for a day that increases if given with other vaccines said Dr Dull. It was shown that this could be limited by prophylactic administration of paracetamol.

Check back here in a couple of days for the presentation. Great presentation Peter!