NIH awards three new SBIR grants to Taiga

Oct 22 2010

Taiga Biotechnologies, Inc. today announced that the company has received three new Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants from the National Institutes of Health, totaling $1.7 million. This adds to the two previous grants awarded to Taiga for various applications of its proprietary technology platforms, for a total in NIH funding to date of over $2.1 million.

“The ability to generate fully human antibodies to difficult targets will provide an important source of novel therapeutic candidates. This novel approach will enable us to deliberately make high affinity antibodies to self-proteins as well as regions within proteins that previously have been off-limits to the immune system”

"We are very pleased to gain this additional non-dilutive funding. With these new SBIR grants, Taiga has now received peer-reviewed validation across all four of its primary technology platforms: therapeutic antibodies against difficult protein targets, an immune response enhancer for vaccines to infectious diseases and cancer, universal donor blood stem cells, and blood cell expansion technology," said Brian Turner, Ph.D., President and Chief Scientific Officer.

Specifically, the SBIR grants include:

• Phase I SBIR grant by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), to further develop Taiga's antibody program in the context of novel neutralizing antibodies to Influenza. The specific aims proposed in this grant helped solidify the basic experimental approach to generate antibodies for difficult protein targets.
• Phase I SBIR grant, funded by the National Institute of Heart, Lung and Blood (NHLBI), to further the development of a novel universal donor blood stem cell line for the treatment of AIDS. This proposal aimed to develop novel non-genetic approaches for the generation of conditionally immortalized human blood stem cell lines. The long-term goal is to apply these approaches for the development of a blood stem cell line that can be used to treat AIDS patients. The ability to make bone marrow transplantation universally accessible will also provide significant benefit for cancer patients, as well as those who suffer from genetically caused or acquired immundeficiencies.
• A second, Phase II SBIR grant from NHLBI for Taiga's novel universal donor blood stem cell line for the treatment of AIDS. This grant has now been awarded following the successful completion of the aims proposed in the above Phase I grant.
• A Phase I SBIR grant, also funded by NHLBI, for the scale up and characterization of Taiga's blood pharming technology. This novel technology will allow for the production of human red blood cells in a dish, starting with a continuous and defined source of red blood cells that can be amplified on demand.
• A Phase I SBIR grant, funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), to test Taiga's novel immune enhancer in the context of HIV vaccines. The ability to prime the immune response to generate antibodies that can recognize many variants of HIV could significantly improve vaccine outcomes against that virus.

Taiga's key platform technologies related to a novel approach for developing fully human monoclonal antibodies to difficult protein antigens, as well as a novel means to conditionally immortalize human blood stem cells, were developed in the laboratory of Yosef Refaeli, Ph.D., at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and National Jewish Medical and Research Center. Those institutions have exclusively licensed the technology to Taiga Biotechnologies, and Dr. Refaeli serves as the Chairman of Taiga's Scientific Advisory Board. These two technology platforms are critical for the development of novel monoclonal antibodies for difficult protein antigens and a universal donor blood stem cell line, as well as the blood pharming applications that will be further developed under the aegis of the SBIR grants.

"The ability to generate fully human antibodies to difficult targets will provide an important source of novel therapeutic candidates. This novel approach will enable us to deliberately make high affinity antibodies to self-proteins as well as regions within proteins that previously have been off-limits to the immune system," said Dr. Refaeli.

Brian Turner, Ph.D., President and Chief Scientific Officer of Taiga Biotechnologies, the principal investigator on Taiga's Phase II grant, further commented, "The ability to transplant any patient who could benefit from a blood stem cell transplant will be important not only for HIV infected patients, but may also change the standard of care for hematologic cancers, autoimmune disease, and other diseases with the potential to be cured by blood cell transplantation. The generation of an HIV-1 resistant blood stem cell line that can be used for transplantation in the clinic, regardless of genetic matching, will revolutionize the clinical use of bone marrow transplantation by enabling many more patients to access this procedure than is possible with current technologies."

Taiga Biotechnologies itself developed the technology behind the immune enhancer, and it is the company's first in-house technology to be peer reviewed and funded by the federal government.