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Adjuvantix offers a ‘one-stop-shop’ for vaccine companies requiring new adjuvant technologies to increase the safety and efficacy of novel prophylactic and therapeutic vaccines

Founded in October 1999, Adjuvantix is using its specialist adjuvant technology to collaborate with vaccine companies to create a range of improved prophylactic vaccines and to develop novel therapeutic vaccines. Recent developments, both scientific and financial, have propelled Adjuvantix into new areas and have branded the Adjuvantix name as ‘one to watch’.

The company’s research originated from Sheffield University, where Dr Andrew Heath, founder of Adjuvantix, studied antibodies that recognize co-stimulatory receptors in the immune system, located on B-and T-cells. Dr Heath applied this research to create the first rationally designed adjuvants. Previously, adjuvants have acted by providing a general activation stimulus to the immune system. However, such traditional adjuvants, while helping the immune response, are associated with side effects such as fever, malaise and inflammation, which limit their utility.

Adjuvantix’ rational design approach is to activate B and T cells specifically by associating the adjuvant response with the particular antigen against which an immune response is required. This design exploits the two stages required for lymphocyte activation: a signal from an antigen-specific receptor, followed by a second signal from a co-stimulatory receptor. In the immune system, two secondary signals are pre-eminently important for activating B-cells and T-cells. These signals are transduced by the lymphocyte cell-surface receptors CD40 and CD28 (respectively).

Adjuvantix is targeting CD40 in its product development programs, because CD40 also plays an important role in cell-mediated immunity, an area that is important for the development of therapeutic vaccines. The generation of cell-mediated immunity is difficult to achieve with current vaccine strategies, except by use of ‘viable’ vaccine materials that pose a risk of infection of the recipient, and his/her contacts. An advantage of Adjuvantix’ approach is that it can generate cell mediated immunity without exposing the recipient to potentially infectious material and without the risk of creating (accidentally) an outbreak of the infectious disease that the vaccine is intended to prevent or treat.

The adjuvant technology providesthe lymphocytes with “a ‘license to kill’ virus infected or cancerous cells,” Peter Laing explained, and the company’s approaches (producing differing profiles of cell-mediated and antibody-mediated immunity) will allow the development of both prophylactic and therapeutic vaccines. Adjuvantix has a number of projects underway:

• Collaboration with an undisclosed major pharmaceutical company to develop a therapeutic vaccine for herpes simplex virus (HSV) type II, cause of genital herpes (there is also an opportunity for a prophylactic vaccine in this field).
• Collaboration with an undisclosed pharmaceutical company to develop a prophylactic influenza vaccine.
• Collaboration with London-based company Lipoxen Technologies to develop a prophylactic pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine. This is already a blockbuster market area (a licensed conjugate vaccine has generated sales reaching US$1 billion. Adjuvantix seeks to produce a vaccine of similar efficacy but with wider strain coverage to compete effectively in this market.

Adjuvantix expects to have therapeutic vaccines on the market in around 5-6 years. Clinical trials for prophylactic vaccines, especially in children, take longer — these products may reach the market in 7-8 years.

The company’s model is to license its IP to large pharmaceutical companies in return for milestone and royalty payments.

Adjuvantix’ technology has potential in a number of other disease areas. For example, in many cancers, the antigens are modifications of host proteins that, themselves, are immunologically silent, and (under ordinary circumstances) do not generate an immune response. In order to alert the immune system to recognize and destroy cancer cells, cytotoxic T-cells (capable of killing cancerous cells) must be generated.

Adjuvantix technologies can generate cytotoxic T-cells without recourse to potentially dangerous ‘viable’ materials. Adjuvantix’ technology also has potential in the area of protein folding disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease and Creutzfeld Jakob disease (CJD) and its new variant. The peptides and proteins that are the subject of abnormal folding and toxicity in these diseases are not strongly immunogenic. Adjuvantix has adjuvant approaches to suit, which are capable of rendering any protein or peptide highly immunogenic, and producing antibodies that would intercept the variant forms of these proteins before they can exert a toxic effect. Discussions are under way with a company with expertise in protein folding diseases, including CJD, which could lead to the development of a therapeutic vaccine.

Grants from the Wellcome Trust helped to fund Dr Heath’s preliminary research, which led to the expansion of the company in 2001 when it received further funding from the White Rose Technology Seedcorn Fund (WRTSF).

Adjuvantix has also received an award under the small business research initiative from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC). Five years from now, an ideal position for the company would be as a listed company on the London Stock Exchange and NASDAQ, having taken over a US or European company to provide critical mass and manufacturing resources.

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