Vaccibody received a €2 million ($2.54 million) grant from the Norwegian Research Council’s BIA Program to develop a therapeutic vaccine against precancerous lesions of the cervix. The new vaccine, VB10.16, will be based on the company’s Vaccibody DNA vaccine platform.

According to the company, current vaccine technologies have proven less efficient against pre-existing diseases. In these cases a stronger immunization strategy is required, and the company says its Vaccibody technology fills that need through innovative vaccine construction. A Vaccibody construct can be illustrated as a three component unit with a corresponding DNA expression cassette. The construct is modular and can easily be exchanged for any vaccine or targeting elements.”

The company believes that its “easy-to-administer therapeutic vaccine” is the “‘missing link’ in DNA vaccines,” explains CEO Ole Henrik Brekke. “Firstly by targeting antigen-presenting cells we get a faster and longer lasting immune response at a lower dose than traditional vaccines. Secondly, unlike Dendreon, there is no need to extract patient cells, rather we just use a simple DNA or protein subunit vaccine, which attracts, ligates and activates the antigen-presenting cells by itself.”

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