Bavarian Nordic Research Institute was founded in 1994. The company's HIV therapeutic vaccine programme started in 1996, with a first IND for melanoma therapeutic vaccine filed in 1998. Bavarian Nordic completed its IPO in November 1998, and moved its headquarters to Copenhagen Europe Center in July 1999. The subsidiary Austrian Nordic was 2000 established in Vienna, Austria to conduct the development programmes on the retrovirus vector area. Bavarian Nordic creates novel prophylactic and therapeutic approaches for the development, production, testing and marketing of novel pharmaceutical products. Bavarian Nordic has strong alliances with research partners worldwide, and operations in several countries. Instead of developing separate products for every known disease, Bavarian Nordic is focusing on technology platforms used for the treatment of a number of diseases beyond the present scope of the company's present projects. Bavarian Nordic is also looking to in-license certain genes (encoding specific epitopes or antigens) for vaccination, using its MVA-BN vector system. Opportunities also lie in large-scale production and local supply arrangements for smallpox vaccines to governments.