Dutch-CDMO Intravacc has been awarded a $14.6 million contract by the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to develop an intranasal vaccine against gonorrhea, the company announced this week.
Using its own proprietary outer membrane vesicles (OMV) platform technology, the company will use the money to develop a complete production process for the vaccine called NGoXIM.
Gonorrhea is caused by the Neisseria gonorrhoeae bacteria, and while there are currently no vaccines against the sexually transmitted disease, OMVs have shown some protection against it.
NGoXIM has already been confirmed to induce potent, lasting, and cross-protective immune responses in proof-of-concept animal model studies. The vaccine is based on gonococcal OMVs and sustained-release microspheres which will contain recombinant human IL-2. The microspheres are developed by American biotech Therapyx.