AlphaVax, Inc. recently received notification from the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), one of the granting institutes of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), that it has been awarded a second grant to continue development of a smallpox vaccine based on AlphaVax's proprietary vector platform.

The grant will support additional studies in rodents and non-human primates to further characterize the high-level protection observed previously in these species.

Work completed during the first grant period demonstrated that AlphaVax's smallpox vaccine, which expresses four, highly conserved poxvirus proteins, could provide humoral responses comparable to those obtained with a licensed vaccine. Furthermore, the AlphaVax vaccine protected mice against vaccinia virus challenge and non-human primates against a lethal challenge with monkeypox virus. The details of this work will be presented by Dr Kurt Kamrud, director of discovery research at AlphaVax and the Principal Investigator on both grants, at the XVII International Poxvirus and Iridovirus

"The work completed under the NIAID grant to date is an excellent demonstration of the potential of our alphavirus vector platform to address many different diseases as well as bioterrorism threats. We have shown efficacy of this platform in numerous animal models and safety and immunogenicity in three clinical trials to date. We look forward to working with the US Government to advance a new smallpox vaccine that has an excellent safety profile and is capable of being rapidly manufactured using AlphaVax's proprietary manufacturing process", said Dr Jonathan F Smith, chief scientific officer at AlphaVax.