Transgene announced that it has entered into an agreement with the French AIDS Research Agency (Agence Nationale de Recherches sur le SIDA /ANRS) and the French Institute for Health and Medical Research (Institut National de la Sante et de la Recherche Medicale/INSERM) to construct and manufacture pre-clinical lots of a novel AIDS vaccine.

Transgene, a biopharmaceutical company dedicated to the discovery and development of therapeutic vaccines, will make the constructs consisting of Modified Vaccinia Ankara (MVA) vectors carrying AIDS virus epitopes from Gag, Nef and Pol genes and will manufacture the pre-clinical lots. INSERM, which owns the intellectual property of the Nef protein fragments, will conduct the immunological pre-clinical testing of the vaccine constructs together with ANRS. Under the terms of this short-term service agreement, Transgene will receive payment from ANRS.

"We are pleased to collaborate with the ANRS and INSERM on this serious worldwide public health problem. We believe that this agreement is further evidence of the broad capability of Transgene's technology both in the construction and the manufacturing of recombinant vaccines and vectors," said Jean-Francois Carmier, chief executive officer of Transgene.