PRIMABioMed Limited, the cancer and immunotherapy research and therapeutic development company, announced that its Panvax Limited subsidiary has entered into a research collaboration with the Paris-based Institute Pasteur to develop the Company's DCtag antigen delivery technology in combination with Institute Pasteur's proprietary malaria proteins.The immediate goal of the collaboration is to assess the potential of the combined technologies as a malaria vaccine.

DCtag is a platform technology with the potential to boost the immune responses to vaccine and immunotherapy products being developed for both human and animal health.PRIMA's Panvax subsidiary is advancing programs in viral diseases and cancer in order to demonstrate that the DCtag technology is able to induce effective immune responses and protection against disease.

The collaboration will expand upon previous pre-clinical results in which DCtag has demonstrated strong protection from malaria infection in mouse models.Panvax's malaria program will be advanced by assessing the potential of a human malaria vaccine to induce effective immune responses to proteins derived from the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum.Initial studies will be undertaken in mouse models of this form of the disease and results are expected to be available within 12 months.

Malaria causes a complex infection involving primary infection in the liver followed by infection of red blood cells.Vaccines that are effective against malaria are likely to induce both antibody and cell-mediated immune responses to malaria proteins contained in a vaccine.Both of these responses are features of the DCtag technology.

Marcus Clark, Chief Executive Officer of PRIMABiomed stated, "If successful, this collaboration could be expanded to evaluate Panvax's lead candidate malaria vaccine in preparation for undertaking clinical trials.The Pasteur Institute is a valuable partner with an internationally recognized research program in malaria vaccines."