Recombinant Vaccines Based on Poxvirus Vectors

The technology offered for licensing is foundational in the area of recombinant DNA vaccines. In the last several years, facilitated through a licensing program of the NIH, the technology has been broadly applied in the development and commercialization of several novel human and veterinary vaccines in the areas of infectious disease as well as cancer therapeutics. The NIH wishes to expand its licensing program of the subject technology in a variety of applications that will benefit public health.

Briefly, the technology describes and claims methods of constructing recombinant vaccines utilizing any recombinant poxvirus, and in particular vaccinia virus (i.e. Modified Vaccinia Ankara or other strains) as a backbone that carries a foreign DNA. The foreign DNA can be related to a viral pathogen for example, or to a tumor-associated antigen. Upon administration of the recombinant virus to a human or animal subject, the foreign gene is expressed in vivo to elicit an immune response against the respective pathogen or the respective tumor.

The technology takes advantage of the unique properties of poxviruses as a delivering vehicle and of the ease of preparation of such constructs.

The applications of this technology have been extensively covered by many publications, including more than 100 publications from the inventor (see sampling below). The publications cover a wide variety of vaccines such as HIV, papilloma virus, influenza and others.

Note: Samples of plasmids and vaccinia virus used in the invention are deposited in the American Type Culture Collection and in the NIH and may be available for licensees upon request.

Potential Commercial Applications:		Competitive Advantages:
Prophylactic and/or therapeutic vaccines Infectious disease and cancer Human and animal vaccines Immunotherapy Protein expression system		Recombinant Poxviruses vectors in DNA vaccines have exhibited some advantages as compared to other viral vectors such as adenovirus, retrovirus or papillomavirus: High safety profile Wide host range Ability to accommodate large amounts of foreign DNA including multiple genes No loss of infectivity upon insertion of foreign DNA Unique transcriptional regulatory signals of the virus facilitates flexibility in genome strategy In addition, the following properties have been demonstrated: Immunization with vaccinia-vectored vaccines provides long-lasting protection Vaccinia virus is very stable and no cold-chain is required in distribution network Induce mucosal immune response Induce humeral and cellular immunity

Development Stage:
Fully developed. The technology has been already successfully implemented in commercial veterinary vaccines (i.e. rabies) and is in advance clinical trials in several companies in the area of cancer immunotherapy.

Inventors:

Bernard Moss (NIAID)  ➽ more inventions...


Intellectual Property:
U.S. Pat: 7,045,313 issued 2006-05-16
U.S. Pat: 7,015,024 issued 2006-03-21
U.S. Pat: 6,998,252 issued 2006-02-14
U.S. Pat: 7,045,136 issued 2006-05-16
US Application No. 06/555,811
US Application No. 07/539,169
PCT Application No. PCT/US83/001863

Publications:
Moss B and Earl PL. PMID 18265301
Robinson HL, et al. PMID 18160013
Wyatt LS, et al. PMID 18155813
Hebben M, et al. PMID 17892951

Licensing Contact:
Benjamin Hurley, Ph.D.
Email: benjamin.hurley@nih.gov
Phone: 240-669-5092

OTT Reference No: E-552-1982-2
Updated: Aug 18, 2015