Date: 2017-10-12
Type of information: Collaboration agreement
Compound: universal vaccine candidate designed to induce protective immune responses against both subtypes (A & B) of RSV
Company: Bavarian Nordic (Denmark) SGS (Switzerland)
Therapeutic area: Infectious diseases
Type agreement: collaboration
Action mechanism: vaccine
Disease: Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) infection
Details:
- • On October 12, 2017, SGS and Bavarian Nordic have entered into collaboration to develop a new respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) challenge strain. This will assist with the advancement of a universal vaccine candidate designed to induce protective immune responses against both subtypes (A & B) of RSV. The project will build upon the results of phase II trials undertaken by Bavarian Nordic, and will include a human challenge study, which will be carried out at the SGS Clinical Pharmacology Unit in Antwerp, Belgium, using the new RSV challenge strain, once it has been fully developed and validated. The collaboration comes after SGS’s success in the development of a novel GMP-manufactured, non-hemagglutinating, wild-type strain of Influenza A H3N2 (A/Belgium/4217/2015) which is approved for use as a challenge agent in studies demonstrating the early efficacy of influenza drugs and vaccines in healthy volunteers. The performance of the human challenge or the controlled human infection model (CHIM) and the value of the efficacy data associated is directly related to the quality of the challenge agent. With recent failures seen at phase III for a number of promising pipeline products, de-risking the late phase element of drug development is more important than ever. New influenza and RSV challenge agents, representing more recent circulating strains, with strong virological and host signals are essential for clinical evaluation if the model is to develop and provide the level of assurance required for successful candidate selection and progression.
Financial terms:
Latest news:
Is general: Yes
