Bacilligen, Inc received a grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a component of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), to develop an influenza vaccine based on the company's BVS vaccine vector platform.

BVS will be faster, cheaper, and safer than existing vaccine vector and production platforms, including cell culture-based influenza vaccine systems and others. BVS-based vaccines are completely producible via bacterial fermentation while other vaccine viral vectors require the use of more costly and slower cell culture. The system's overall speed and relative cost efficiency make it the platform of choice for the rapid deployment necessary in emergency preparedness situations.

"Our current projection is 70 days from the isolation of an emergent/pandemic flu strain to vaccine ready for human use. This new NIH grant will help us optimize various parameters of the BVS system including production, purification, and administration," said Bacilligen president and CEO, Dr. Steve Bende. "We hope to quickly complete remaining work on the flu vaccine and make BVS available as a rapid turnkey vaccine development and deployment system for non-emergency use and other infectious diseases, as well," Bende added. The company is also funded by NIH for development of a BVS-based AIDS vaccine

Bacilligen is a privately-held biotechnology company focused on the development of recombinant mycobacteria, rMB, as an improvement to BCG cancer immunotherapy, as well as a novel bacteriophage capsid vector system, BVS, for the delivery of infectious disease vaccines.