ILiAD Biotechnologies Receives NIH Grant to Develop Novel Tuberculosis Vaccine using proprietary B-Tech Vector Platform

ILiAD Biotechnologies announced that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has selected ILiAD’s B-Tech Vector Technology for funding as part of its newly created Innovation for Tuberculosis Vaccine Discovery (ITVD) program. This program supports novel innovative vaccine candidates for the prevention of tuberculosis.

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According to the NIH grant funding opportunity announcement, “the WHO estimates that in 2019, 10 million persons fell ill with tuberculosis (TB) and 1.4 million succumbed to the disease. While significant advances have been made in recent years, effective interventions to prevent ongoing transmission and disease in high burden settings are sorely lacking. Vaccines that either prevent infection or transition to active TB are urgently needed to significantly decrease the global burden and ultimately reach the goal of ending TB.”

ILiAD’s B-Tech Vector Platform utilizes a proprietary attenuated Bordetella pertussis (B. pertussis) strain as an intranasal vaccine vector to express pathogen target antigens, inducing both systemic and respiratory mucosal immunologic responses. B-Tech Vector Platform vaccines have demonstrated immunogenicity in 8 peer-reviewed published pre-clinical studies targeting viruses, bacteria, and parasites. The induction of mucosal immunity is key to preventing infection and transmission of respiratory pathogens, and induction of memory B and T cells plays a central role.

ILiAD collaborators for the NIH grant include co-principal investigator Dr. Camille Locht (co-inventor of the B-Tech Technology), Inserm Unit U1019 located at Institut Pasteur de Lille (Lille, France), ILiAD’s wholly owned subsidiary, BioLyo Technologies B.V. (Ghent, Belgium), and The Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux energies alternatives (CEA) department of Infectious disease models for innovative therapies (IDMIT) (Fontenay-aux-Roses, France). Initial funding for the first 3 years is ~$1,000,000. The program aims to successfully demonstrate protection in pre-clinical TB challenge models, supporting eventual clinical development.

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Peter Goldstein, Executive Director of Vaccine Platform Development and lead investigator for the TB vaccine program at ILiAD stated, “ILiAD’s intranasal B-Tech Vector platform induces immune protection precisely at the point of TB entry, the respiratory tract and lungs, which is promising for the development of a TB vaccine. In addition, our respiratory bacteria-based platform may also have an inherent advantage in its ability to induce immunological protection against other pathogenic respiratory bacteria such as TB.”

In addition to preclinical development of B-Tech Vector vaccines for TB and other targets, ILiAD continues to advance its BPZE1 pertussis vaccine through late-stage clinical development. BPZE1 has received FDA Fast Track designation and is the Company’s most advanced vaccine candidate.

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