Artes And Burnet Partner In New Malaria Vaccine
Artes Biotech and Burnet Institute have entered into collaboration to work on a new kind of malaria vaccine.
Funded by PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative (MVI), the partners will utilize technology built by associate professor David Anderson, Deputy Director of Burnet Institute, and colleagues. The partnership will also leverage Artes’ vaccine production platform Metavax.
The companies will produce purified vaccine antigens Pfs25 and Pfs230 as virus-like particles (VLP) for evaluation in lab studies. A type of nanoparticles, VLPs will be ingested by immune cells in an attempt to stimulate the immune system to target and destroy malaria.
As part of a PATH MVI initiative, the partnership will center on building strategies to manufacture vaccines able to stop transmission of malarial infection from mosquitoes to humans. Ashley Birkett, MVI director, said, “At MVI, we think that transmission-blocking vaccines could play a significant role in the eventual eradication of malaria. We are therefore very pleased to be involved in this project, which uses an innovative approach to expressing transmission-blocking antigens.”
Earlier this July, PATH reported that one of its partners GlaxoSmithKline filed a regulatory application for its malaria vaccine candidate RTS,S to the European Medicines Agency (EMA). PATH has contributed financial and scientific support to the development of RTS,S along with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Commenting on the Artes-Burnet collaboration, Artes Managing Director Dr. Michael Piontek said, “In this new project, Burnet and Artes will combine their expertise to develop and test a novel approach for producing malaria vaccines. We are excited about the recognition and support provided by MVI for this development work.”
Professor James Beeson, Burnet Institute Co-Head of the Centre for Biomedical Research, said, “One of the challenges for malaria is how to best make vaccines in order to stimulate a strong and effective immune response and boost the immune system to fight malaria infections.”