Cambridge Biostability helps US fight bioterrorism
The US Government has turned to Cambridge Biostability Ltd to provide innovative vaccine technology crucial to its biodefence strategy, according to the latest issue of the Department of Trade and Industry's UK Watch magazine.
The company has secured a £1.9m contract to develop a single ready-to-inject vaccine against botulism, a potentially lethal bioweapon.
Cambridge Biostability is a privately held company founded in 1998 with a combination of investor funding and project financing with a portfolio of patents.
The stockpiling of any vaccine presents a series of chemical and logistical challenges to ensure the effectiveness and potency of stored supplies. But botulism brings an additional problem, the magazine reports.
"Botulism can be caused by seven different neurotoxins produced by six different bacteria," Dr Bruce Roser (pictured), Cambridge Biostability's Chief Scientific Advisor and founder said. "In the event of an attack people would need to be given multiple vaccine injections and booster shots for each vaccine."
When the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases discovered the company's revolutionary technology for the formulation, storage and delivery of vaccines and drugs it saw the potential to overcome these problems. The company is now part of a research team led by US biodefence firm DVC LLC, which develops and licenses safe and efficacious biological products, the magazine reported.
Taking tehnology to a new level
Cambridge Biostability is trying to take the technology it has already used for hepatitis B, Hib (Haemophilus Influenzae type b) and tetanus vaccines to a new level. Its invention mimics a plant survival strategy, which allows them to exist in extreme conditions in a dried-up form – a process called anhydrobiosis. Vaccines are embedded in glass microspheres, which are suspended in an inert liquid, preventing chemical reaction and thermal damage. This liquid is then injected into the recipient where the microspheres dissolve in the body’s own water releasing the vaccine. By simply mixing different microspheres in the inert liquid many vaccines can be combined in a single dose – multivalency.
"This means that for the first time it is possible to create a single multivalent vaccine that can be stored safely without refrigeration," Dr Roser said. "This paves the way for more dispersed repositories, making the vaccines more accessible in an attack."
The breakthrough also opens the possibility of cutting the cost of refrigerating vaccines, one element of the vaccine programme (estimated by the World Health Organisation to be between £110-170m a year) and the 50% wastage costs caused by incorrectly delivered or prepared vaccines.
"Our technology is uniquely suitable for the developing world and we license it on very modest terms for public health applications," Dr Roser said. "We are establishing a cGMP manufacturing facility in Leicester to produce Phase I clinical trials material and to help licensees in this market get their products off the ground quickly."
26th April 2006
