InvVax Achieves Preclinical Milestone with Universal Flu Vaccine Candidate
October 23 2018 - 1:00PM
Business Wire
Privately held InvVax, Inc. (Pasadena, CA), in collaboration
with Trudeau Institute Contract Research Organization and Hong Kong
University, announced that it has demonstrated preclinical success
for its universal flu vaccine candidate.
Arguably the most formidable characteristic of the influenza
virus is its ability to rapidly mutate, owing to a high error rate
of the enzymes which make copies of its genome. This leads to the
generation of hundreds of circulating strains, and the constant
shifting of those strains. Each year the World Health Organization
predicts the most dominant circulating strains for inclusion in the
next annual flu vaccine, but often those predictions are erroneous,
causing the ineffectiveness of the vaccine. The constant genetic
movement of the virus is known as “mutational escape.”
The solution that most flu vaccine companies and academic
laboratories have taken to solve this problem is to go after
so-called “conserved” regions of the virus. These are regions that
are the same from strain to strain. While this promises to be an
effective strategy to hit all strains of flu (thus “universal”),
InvVax believes that it fails to account for the most important
feature of the virus – its high mutation rate. Conserved regions
are often mutable, meaning that they can mutate without destroying
the virus, as was found in a genomic screen by the company’s
Founder while at UCLA. In contrast, there are what is known as
“invariant” regions: places where the virus, if it mutates, will
self-destruct. The InvVax differentiator is to go after these
regions to prevent viral mutational escape. InvVax’s proprietary
regions, which they have exclusively licensed from UCLA, are the
basis of the company’s universal flu vaccine program.
Dr. Arthur Young, Founder and President of InvVax, stated: “It’s
like an automobile: remove its hubcaps, and it’ll still be able to
drive; but remove its engine, and it can’t go anywhere. InvVax is
targeting the flu’s engine, and its tires, etc., while most other
groups are taking pieces off the car which may not be critical for
the running of the car.”
In its development program, InvVax settled on four invariant
regions of influenza that induce an immune response in mice.
Delivery of their vaccine through the nose and under the skin,
followed by infection with lethal flu virus, resulted in 100%
survival vs. 0% for the control, for one H1N1 and two H3N2 strains.
InvVax is now developing their vaccine, consisting of fifteen
invariant regions, for human clinical trials.
Dr. Leo Poon, InvVax’s collaborator at Hong Kong University,
remarked, “This is highly interesting; if the invariant regions
work as predicted, this might be the Achilles' heel of influenza
virus. We might eventually come up with a very effective way
to…control influenza virus infection.”
“It’s still a long road ahead,” Dr. Young admitted, “but we’re
really on the verge of something exciting. We believe we’ve got the
only product that disallows viral mutational escape, and that all
other products out there will eventually fail because the virus is
going to beat them by its ‘blind’ ability to rapidly mutate.”
“And what’s more incredible,” added Dr. Young, “is that we’re
now using this platform—determining where the invariant regions are
for other viruses that mutate rapidly, such as HIV and Hepatitis C
virus—for new, durable vaccines and therapies. So influenza is just
the beginning.”
InvVax is currently raising a Series A round to fund preclinical
safety studies and Phase 1 clinical trials.
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InvVax, Inc.Arthur Youngapyoung@inv-vax.com