CAMBRIDGE, Mass.
Tiba Biotech, a preclinical biopharmaceutical company, today announced the extension of an earlier collaboration with academic partners to advance broadly protective influenza RNA vaccine research. With funding from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and its Collaborative Influenza Vaccine Innovation Centers (CIVICs) initiative, the project brings together scientists from the University of Minnesota, Emory University, and Tiba Biotech to study the level and duration of protection of Tiba’s next-generation RNA vaccines.
Influenza remains a seasonal public health threat, leading to between 290,000 and 650,000 deaths a year according to the World Health Organization. An RNA vaccine could rapidly respond to changing viral targets, saving lives and reducing economic burden. Tiba’s novel multi-antigen influenza vaccine is rooted in an earlier NIAID CIVICs award, support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and an ongoing NIH-funded Phase I SBIR.
This is an opportunity for Tiba to advance our early progress with domain experts who have access to some of the most advanced tools and technologies.
Headed by Rafi Ahmed of Emory University and Florian Krammer of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, the Sinai-Emory Multi-Institutional CIVIC (SEM-CIVIC) Vaccine Center program (NIAID contract #75N93019C00051) is a network of leading research centers working together in a multidisciplinary effort to advance influenza vaccine science. This seven year effort with up to $51 million in potential funding is focused on designing novel vaccine candidates and delivery platforms with an emphasis on cross-protective vaccine strategies. With further pre-clinical validation and safety studies, Tiba’s multi-antigen vaccine and novel RNABL™ delivery platform could eventually qualify for additional collaborative CIVICs activities such as vaccine manufacturing and clinical testing.
“This is an opportunity for Tiba to advance our early progress with domain experts who have access to some of the most advanced tools and technologies,” said Jasdave Chahal, Tiba co-founder who will be overseeing vaccine design. “The CIVICs collaboration allows the Tiba team to access a full range of expertise, from discovery through to regulatory approval.”
David Masopust of the University of Minnesota highlighted the importance of this work. “Other companies are pursuing RNA-based influenza vaccines, but struggle with adverse inflammation caused by the lipid nanoparticles used for delivery. Tiba’s next generation nanoparticle platform can deliver a larger payload with less reactogenicity than current delivery modalities.”
For information regarding Tiba’s initial CIVICs contract funding, see our earlier CIVICs blog post, and for the SBIR Phase I award see our 2021 announcement. The team’s original influenza work, while at MIT, was published in PNAS as “Dendrimer-RNA nanoparticles generate protective immunity against lethal Ebola, H1N1 influenza, and Toxoplasma gondii challenges with a single dose”.
About Tiba Biotech
Tiba Biotech is a preclinical stage biopharmaceutical company developing next-generation RNA vaccines and therapeutics based on a novel dendrimer nanoparticle delivery platform initially developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. Tiba Biotech’s nanoparticle delivery platform can safely enable large vaccine and therapeutic payloads, with relaxed cold-chain requirements and superior safety compared to existing RNA technologies, to provide protection against multiple human and animal diseases. For more information about Tiba Biotech, visit www.tiba.bio.
About CIVICs
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Collaborative Influenza Vaccine Innovation Centers (CIVICs) program includes a network of cutting-edge research sites supporting NIAID’s initiative to develop a universal influenza vaccine. NIAID’s vision is to develop highly effective, long-lasting influenza vaccines that protect against multiple strains of the influenza virus and are suitable for all age groups. CIVICs is continually advancing vaccine candidates from the research laboratories to clinical trials. For more information about CIVICs, visit www.niaidcivics.org.
