The recent outbreaks of TB in the UK reflect the rising incidence of this disease globally, where it is the second largest killer behind HIV/AIDS. In addition, a third of all deaths in AIDS are a result of TB.
The current BCG vaccine, though used in the UK, is of limited efficacy and is not used in many other countries including the US. The development of improved vaccines for TB is therefore imperative for the ultimate elimination of TB as a public global health problem.
ImmBio has discovered new insights into how the immune system is controlled by studying the biological effects of fever, the first sign of any infection. When a fever is contracted, the resulting increase in body heat produces a family of proteins called heat shock proteins (hsps).
These are used by special antigen-presenting cells (APCs) to generate a disease-specific immune response; the APCs act as trawlers, searching for and soaking up the hsps, and triggering an immune response in the process.
The key to ImmBio's platform technology therefore is to derive complexes of disease-specific hsps as vaccines for infectious diseases. As these hsps complexes are what the immune system normally recognises in an immune response to infectious agents, ImmBio's vaccines should elicit the maximum immune response to infectious diseases.
While ImmBio will use the SMART funding to focus on the development of a new TB vaccine, its platform technology is also applicable to other infectious diseases, for example Hepatitis C.
MD of ImmBio, Dr Camilo Colaco, said:
'At ImmBio we have discovered how the immune system normally recognises infectious disease agents, showing that fever is a key part of this process.
' This has led to a new approach to vaccine development that simply attempts to mimic the effects of fever on the infectious agent. With the aid of the SMART Development award, we will now apply this approach to the development of a TB vaccine.'
The Generics Group is an integrated technology consulting, development and investment company, with an international reputation for successfully exploiting emerging science and technology for commercial markets.
ImmunoBiology Ltd is a healthcare start-up focussed on exploiting recent developments in the emerging science of Immunobiology to develop the next generation of vaccines for the prevention and therapy of infectious diseases.
The SMART Development award is a competitive funding award from the DTI to assist SMEs to develop actual products based on their innovative technology platforms. |
