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NIH Awards ApoImmune Phase I Grant for Tuberculosis Vaccine Development
August 31, 2008 (Louisville, KY) - ApoImmune, Inc. today announced that it has been awarded a Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant of $822,000 for developing a new tuberculosis (TB) vaccine based on the Company's novel ApoVax104 platform technology. Award of the grant is a significant step for ApoImmune in expanding its platform technology to other therapeutic areas. To date the Company has primarily focused on development of therapeutic vaccines for cancer. This project intends to expand the scope of the Company's technology to infectious diseases. This award is the ninth National Institutes of Health (NIH) SBIR/STTR received by the company.
The two-year Phase I SBIR grant, awarded by National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID), will fund preclinical work developing a novel TB vaccine. The work will be performed in collaboration with Dr. Michael Cynamon at the Central New York Research Corporation in Syracuse, NY. Dr. Cynamon is a renowned TB researcher with vast experience in mycobacterial infections and infectious diseases.
The global demand for TB vaccines is high and the World Health Organization (WHO) describes TB as their biggest killer disease of humans globally. TB kills more than two million people and approximately eight million people are newly infected each year, according to the WHO. Prevention is vital to the fight against TB. There is a profound need for new vaccines both in developing countries, where TB is endemic, and in industrialized countries, which face an emerging threat of multi-drug resistant TB. The current TB vaccine, known as BCG, has limited efficacy and existing therapies are decades old, require months of costly treatment, and can fail to eliminate the infection.
"Our Phase I NIH award is to develop a novel vaccine targeting TB infection and prevention, ultimately producing a desperately needed, highly effective treatment for TB that will overcome the known failures of current intervention strategies," states Steven Downey, President and CEO of ApoImmune, Inc. "Award of the grant also allows ApoImmune to exploit the ApoVax104 technology and apply it to a new therapeutic area, infectious disease. We are very excited about being able to apply the technology to a new area and further develop the vaccine's applicability and marketability."
Market research suggests that new vaccines to prevent TB present a significant opportunity for industry investment with potential global markets of US $450 million to nearly $1 billion. It also shows that TB vaccines are cost-effective interventions for donors, potentially saving millions of lives.
About ApoImmune, Inc.
ApoImmune Inc. is a Louisville, Kentucky-based biotechnology company developing novel immunotherapies, which are treatments based on the concept of regulating the immune system to fight disease. The Company's lead immunotherapy is based on the ProtEx technology's ability to teach the immune system to recognize foreign pathogens as harmful and specifically target those harmful cells for destruction. ApoImmune is also developing ProtEx to suppress the immune system in certain cases, which improves current organ and tissue transplant therapies by protecting the transplant from being attacked by the recipient's immune system when transplanted into the body. An added benefit of the ProtEx immune system suppression technology is that it also reduces the need for powerful immunosuppressive drugs with highly toxic effects that are required after transplantation.
For more information, visit www.apoimmune.com.
Certain statements made throughout this press release that are not historical facts contain forward-looking statements regarding the Company's future plans, objectives and expected performance. Any such forward-looking statements are based on assumptions that the Company believes are reasonable, but are subject to a wide range of risks and uncertainties and, therefore, there can be no assurance that actual results may not differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements.
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