In the first part of a two-part interview, Paz Vellanki of Precision for Medicine explains what sponsors should bring to early FDA meetings and how manufacturing and assay readiness can delay rare disease trials.
|Articles|August 6, 2013
iQur Leads Major European Project to Develop a Universal Influenza Virus Vaccine
Author(s)BioPharm International Editors
iQur announced that it has been granted 5 million EUR ($6.6 million) by the European Union Framework 7 fund to develop a universal influenza vaccine.
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iQur will lead a consortium of world-leading scientists from six sites across Europe, which have the complimentary skills and experience to discover and develop a novel flu vaccine. iQur’s technology will enable the design of a vaccine for influenza with the potential to confer long-term protection, removing the need for annual vaccination, the company reports. In addition, iQur’s vaccine can be made using recombinant protein technology and should be more effective and cheaper to manufacture than conventional vaccines, the company says.
The consortium partners include Leeds University and University College London from the UK, CRP Santé from Luxemburg, the Latvijas Medicinal Centre from Latvia, 3P Pharmaceuticals and Institut Catala de la Salut, both from Spain. The consortium will develop an optimal vaccine using preclinical models, manufacture the product to GMP and finally carry out a Phase I clinical trial. It is anticipated that the project will reach completion in 2017.
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