In a press release issued Monday, Sementis – an Australian company developing a vaccine to treat peanut allergy – announced a collaboration with Enesi Pharma – a UK-based firm specializing in a vaccine delivery platform.
The collaboration is focused on the development and evaluation of solid dose versions of Sementis’ lead peanut hypoallergy vaccine and their single vectored chikungunya/Zika vaccine candidates for administration via Enesi Pharma’s ImplaVax® technology. ImplaVax is an innovative and proprietary needle-free solid dose implant and device technology for subcutaneous vaccination. Data to date demonstrate that ImplaVax-enabled vaccines can deliver superior immune responses compared to standard injection protocols among other benefits such as safety, ease of use, reliability and stability.
Sementis’ investigational peanut hypoallergy vaccine, based on its SCV vector platform, has completed proof-of-concept studies, providing compelling evidence that it offers the possibility of a permanent cure for peanut allergy. It is estimated that over seven million individuals suffer with serious allergy to peanut, including many children, in the major markets of the U.S., Europe and Japan. This represents an estimated cost to healthcare systems in the tens of billions of US dollars annually. An ImplaVax-enabled vaccine could provide a simple and effective means to address peanut allergy on a large scale, particularly for younger sufferers who may have an aversion to needles and traditional injections.
Under the terms of the agreement, Enesi Pharma will formulate solid dose implants based on SCV vaccine provided by Sementis, and Sementis will undertake safety and immunogenicity testing, and preclinical development. Pending positive outcomes, this agreement would set the foundation of future commercial opportunities.
Dr Paul Howley, CEO of Sementis, said:
We are excited with this collaboration as we are very confident that the ImplaVax technology will work extremely well with our vaccine vector technology to reduce, or even eliminate, the reliance on maintaining a cold-chain environment from manufacture to point-of-care, and possibly providing long-term stability to our vaccines. Also, Enesi’s technology may eliminate the need for highly trained healthcare workers to administer our vaccine as no injection is required. We will be evaluating this technology with one of our infectious disease vaccines and one of our hypoallergy vaccine candidates and if proven to expectations the ImplaVax technology will be applicable to all of Sementis vaccines covering infectious disease, allergies and cancers.
Click here to see the press release in its entirety.
