October 24, 2007

Medicago to make bird flu vaccine using VLPs

Medicago Inc has announced a breakthrough in vaccine technology by using highly immunogenic particles called Virus-Like Particles (VLPs) in the production of H5N1 bird flu vaccines.

According to the company, VLPs have significant advantages over conventional vaccines. VLPs are similar to the virus from which they were derived from, hence the name. However, they lack viral nucleic acid, which gives them the best compromise between safety (not infectious) and efficacy (highly immunogenic).

The company's transient expression system, which produces recombinant vaccine antigens in the cells of non-transgenic plants, has successfully produced the H5N1 bird flu vaccine in VLPs, said Dr Louis Vezina, chief scientific officer of Medicago.

VLPs also offer another advantage in that it can be developed quickly to keep up with the constantly evolving H5N1 bird flu, giving VLPs a critical advantage over traditional egg-based and cell culture technologies.

Using the company's proprietary plant-based technology, the company could deliver a VLP vaccine for testing a month after the identification and reception of genetic sequences from the pandemic strain, said Andy Sheldon, president and chief executive officer of Medicago.

Medicago is now initiating preclinical studies with its proprietary VLP against the H5N1 bird flu virus and is now accumulating data.

Medicago is a Quebec-based biopharmaceutical company. The company is focused on the development, production and commercialization of plant-based vaccines and other biopharmaceuticals based on its expertise in genetic engineering of plants.