PR88124

PROVIDENCE, R.I., Feb. 18, 2021 /PRNewswire=KYODO JBN/ --

EpiVax, Inc. ("EpiVax") today announces its participation in the INDIGO

consortium – a partnership of public and private research and development

organizations from the EU, India, and United States (funded by the EU and

India) with the aim of developing next-generation influenza vaccines with

better responsiveness, lower costs, and better accessibility.

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The INDIGO consortium, led by Dr. Remko van Leeuwen (INDIGO's Principal

Investigator) of the Amsterdam Institute for Global Health and Development

("AIGHD"), plans to achieve this goal by exploring innovative influenza vaccine

concepts. The group will aim to produce novel seasonal (A and B) and avian flu

(H7N9 and H5N1) vaccines by combining three cutting-edge elements: novel

recombinant HAs with increased immunogenicity, a potent adjuvant, and delivery

via needle-free intradermal patches. The consortium will seek to validate this

approach by showing preclinical immunogenicity and safety, and GMP manufacture

to ready a vaccine for Phase I clinical trial.

EpiVax will be applying its computational vaccinology expertise in this effort,

combining proprietary immunoinformatics approaches and structural modeling

methods (in collaboration with Dr. Celia Schiffer of UMass Medical School) to

design optimized antigens for inclusion in seasonal and pandemic recombinant HA

vaccine candidates. These novel antigens will be precisely engineered by

scientists at EpiVax to avoid regulatory T cell (Treg) induction and to promote

recruitment of broadly reactive seasonal influenza HA-specific memory CD4+ T

cells to boost protective antibody responses while maintaining neutralizing

antibody epitopes that would be encountered in natural infection with wild-type

HA. This work will be accomplished using the company's exclusive

immunoinformatics tools, including EpiMatrix, ClustiMer, and JanusMatrix,

contained in the iVAX toolkit, an approach which has been validated in EpiVax's

successful H7N9 immune engineering work performed in collaboration with Dr. Ted

Ross of the University of Georgia ("UGA").

EpiVax will operate in the initial antigen design phase, and then provide the

optimized sequences to ExpreS2ion Biotechnologies for development of

recombinant antigens. Recombinant antigens will be passed on to the Institut

National de la Sante et de la Recherche Medicale ("INSERM"), whose scientists,

led by Dr. Jagadeesh Bayry, will test the optimized antigens in human donor

materials and advanced laboratory models, such as humanized mice, to provide

validation of the preclinical immunogenicity and safety of the vaccine

candidates.

EpiVax's Director of Vaccine Research, Dr. Lenny Moise said, "We are pleased to

participate in the INDIGO consortium. EpiVax has spearheaded the computational

vaccinology research space for over twenty years, identifying innovative

techniques to improve vaccine antigen design, and we are looking forward to

applying our expertise in pursuit of safer and more effective flu vaccines."

About EpiVax:

EpiVax is a biotechnology company with expertise in T cell epitope prediction,

immune modulation, and rapid vaccine design. EpiVax's immunogenicity screening

toolkits for therapeutics and vaccines, ISPRI and iVAX, are employed in

advancing the research of a global roster of companies.

For more information about EpiVax, visit www.epivax.com.

Press Contact:

Katie Porter, Business Development Manager

EpiVax

kporter@epivax.com

SOURCE: EpiVax Inc.