Use of mimotope vaccine technology to develop vaccines against bacterial pathogens

ABSTRACT This Small Business Technology TransferSTTRPhase I proposal is in response toNIH NIAID Research Topics in Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases and Bacteriology and Mycology BranchVaccine for prevention of human Q feverQ fever is a worldwide zoonotic disease that is caused by the obligate intracellular Gram negative bacteriumCoxiella burnetiiThe highly infectious nature of Cburnetii and its unique resistance to heatultraviolet lightand other environmental factors make this organism an important zoonotic pathogenand potentially useful in bioterrorism and biological warfareHuman Q fever can develop into a severe chronicpotentially fatal diseaseand there is no vaccine commercially available for prevention of human Q fever in the USThereforeZenVax LLC intends to develop a safe and effective licensed vaccine against Q feverZenVax is a new startup biotech companyfocused on the development of safeeffectiveand novel vaccines against microbial pathogensThe long term goal of this STTR project is to develop a safe and effective licensed vaccine against Q feverZenVax will also use the development of a Q fever mimotope vaccine as the model system to demonstrate the concept that mimotope vaccine technology can be utilized as a broad platform against other bacterial pathogensOur premise is that a peptide mimic of a Cburnetii phase I lipopolysaccharidesPI LPSprotective epitopem Econjugated to keyhole limpet haemocyaninm EKLHconferred significant protection against Cburnetii infectionThe overall objective of this STTR Phase I application is to defineoptimize and validate a multivalent mimotope vaccine against Q feverThis project is significantbecause it will establish theproof of principlenot only for Q fever vaccine but also for a broad vaccine platform approach against other microbial pathogens in generalUpon completion of the Phase I projectwe expect to define a multivalent mimotope vaccine that will be optimized and manufactured as a vaccine under GMP GLP conditions for further safety and immunogenicity testing in the Phase II project Project NarrativeThis STTR project aims to use the development of a Q fever mimotope vaccine as the model system to prove the concept that the mimotope vaccine technology can be utilized as a broad platform against other microbial pathogens