Codagenix Inc. — Department of Agriculture SBIR Phase II: 8.3

Description

This project seeks to further develop a broadly protective Swine Influenza (SIV) vaccine that Codagenix will test in collaboration with the USDA. In Phase I we proved the efficacy of our H1N1 and H1N2 vaccine candidates in swine and built a H3N2 vaccine candidate based on a field-relevant strain which we plan to further test in a trivalent formulation during Phase II. Our technology, termed Synthetic Attenuated Virus Engineering (SAVE), recodes the viral genome to have a "de-optimized" level of translation of viral proteins in the host cell. This deoptimization is achieved via hundred of genetically stable silent mutations, that retain 100% identity to the wildtype protein sequence. SAVE was first applied to poliovirus (Coleman Science 2008), but has now been validated in seven distinct viral targets including influenza (Mueller Nature Biotech. 2010) which has progressed to Phase I clinical trials. SAVE-deoptimized vaccine strains are avirulent while preserving highly immunogenic properties at low doses since they are antigenically identical to the parental wild type strain. The swine industry is >$100B globally and an SIV outbreak has the potential to dramatically reduced the commercial output of this industry by lowering swine weights and leading to mortality. A rapidly deployable, broadly reactive SIV vaccine is needed to safeguard this industry from the clear negative impact SIV could have each season or in an outbreak. This is best accomplished with a live attenuated vaccine.