Date: 2016-01-20
Type of information: Grant
Company: Mucosis (The Netherlands)
Investors: The Wellcome Trust (UK)
Amount: €3.7 milion + € 2 million
Funding type: grant and fundraising
Planned used: The funds will be used to progress Mucosis' proprietary intranasal Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) vaccine, SynGEM®, into phase I and IIa human clinical trials. The trials will be led by world-leading expert in RSV and member of Mucosis’s Scientific Advisory Board, Professor Peter Openshaw FRCP FMedSci and Dr. Christopher Chiu of the National Heart & Lung Institute, Imperial College London. The Wellcome Trust translational fund award will be used to fund a Phase I dose-finding and safety study, followed by a novel phase II challenge study to assess the efficacy of the SynGEM® vaccine against controlled infection with RSV. SynGEM® is based on Mucosis’s proprietary bacterium-like-particle (BLP) based Mimopath® platform, which allows the vaccine to be delivered via mucosal routes, primarily the nose, making the vaccine needle-free. The BLPs carry a unique stable prefusion form of the F vaccine antigen, which has been shown to raise more potent neutralizing antibodies against RSV compared with the postfusion F antigen. SynGEM® is able to elicit the production of Immunoglobulin A (IgA) antibodies more effectively than intramuscular injections because a higher concentration of IgA is produced in mucosal linings than all other types of antibody combined in the blood. There is evidence that IgA plays an important role in the defence against RSV in humans, making SynGEM® more effective as a vaccine against RSV.
Others: * On January 20, 2016, Mucosis , a clinical stage biotechnology company using a proprietary technology platform to develop next-generation and needle-free human vaccines for infectious diseases, announced that it has secured a €3.7 million (£2.77 million) translational fund award from the Wellcome Trust to progress its proprietary intranasal Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) vaccine, SynGEM®, into phase I and IIa human clinical trials. Mucosis also secured €2m additional equity financing from its current investors. These funds will enable Mucosis to complete GMP manufacturing, and to advance the Investigational Medicinal Product Dossier (IMPD) submission materials for clinical trial approval in 2016. Together with an earlier secured €5m from the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO) for the development of SynGEM®, Mucosis is now in an excellent position to advance its clinical program.
Therapeutic area: Infectious diseases
