Selecta Biosciences, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company developing an entirely new class of targeted vaccines and immunotherapies, today announced that Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) has awarded Selecta a subcontract to develop a targeted synthetic vaccine particle product for malaria. Funding for the initiative will be provided by SAIC through its Malaria Vaccine Production and Support Services contract with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which is part of the National Institutes of Health. Selecta's subcontract is part of a collaborative effort by NIAID and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to jointly develop novel therapeutics and vaccines for malaria and will be funded under SAIC's contract (number N01.AI.05421) with NIAID.
"We are extremely pleased that we have been selected to apply our novel vaccine platform to the development of a vaccine for malaria," said Werner Cautreels, Ph.D., President and CEO of Selecta Biosciences. "This collaboration accelerates our progress to apply Selecta's advanced vaccine technology to address the significant unmet medical needs in malaria and highlights the breadth of our vaccine technology to treat a range of diseases that impact human health, including infectious diseases, autoimmune diseases, and smoking cessation."
Under the terms of the award, the targeted Synthetic Vaccine Particle (tSVP™) vaccine for malaria will be developed by Selecta for testing in preclinical studies by SAIC collaborators. tSVP™ products are fully-integrated synthetic nanoparticle vaccines engineered to mimic the properties of natural pathogens to elicit a maximal immune response. Selecta's tSVP™ vaccines are ideally suited to induce a strong immune response to antigens, which has proven to be challenging with other vaccine approaches for certain infectious diseases, such as malaria. Selecta designs tSVP™ products to deliver antigen and adjuvant combinations within the same biodegradable nanoparticle, thus ensuring a focused and durable response while keeping off-target effects at a low level.
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