Firm will use the money to identify a subset of recombinant antigens that induce strong protection.
Antigen Discovery was awarded $1.8 million from NIAID under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The phase 2 STTR grant will fund efforts to further test and validate novel candidate antigens discovered during the company’s STTR phase 1 program. Antigen Discovery intends to develop the novel antigens as core protective components in a vaccine against chlamydia.
The two-year grant supplements a previously awarded phase 2 STTR to the company in 2007. Antigen Discovery will collaborate with investigators in the department of pathology & laboratory medicine of the School of Medicine at the University of California, Irvine.
“Antigen Discovery’s high-throughput proteomics approach has allowed us, for the first time, to successfully scan the entire proteome of Chlamydia trachomatis,” says Dr. Luis de la Maza, principal investigator on the STTR grant. “Our goal for this phase of the project is to identify a small subset of recombinant chlamydial antigens that induce strong protection against infection challenge. These antigens will be ideal candidates to develop a novel chlamydia vaccine.”