NIAID Awards Contracts & Grants
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) within NIH https://www.niaid.nih.gov, has awarded $12 million to three institutions to develop antiviral therapies to treat diseases caused by viruses with pandemic potential. Approximately $61.5 million over five years will be awarded.
The new product development contracts are part of the Antiviral Program for Pandemics (APP) which aims to accelerate the discovery, development, and manufacturing of antiviral medicines. Antivirals are treatments that fight viral infections by acting directly against the virus.
The new contracts will support the development of promising antiviral candidates from late stage preclinical studies through investigational new drug applications enabling activities and clinical testing.
NIAID already supports nine Antiviral Drug Discovery (AVIDD) Centers for Pathogens of Pandemic Concern, https://www.niaid.nih.gov/research/antiviral-drug-discovery-centers-pathogens-pandemic-concern The Centers conduct research on the early stage identification and validation of novel viral targets along with identifying the early-stage characterization of antiviral drug candidates.
The new product development contracts were awarded to Microbiotix, Inc., Worcester, Mass funding for $2,069,416, to Oregon Health and Science University in Portland with funding for $4,696,452, and the Baruch S. Blumberg Institute, Doylestown, Pennsylvania with funding for $5,493,876.
In other news, NIAID has awarded the Texas Biomedical Research Institute, https://www.txbiomed.org and the Access to Advanced Health Institute (AAHI) in Seattle, https:////www.aahi.org, a $3.5 million five year grant titled Innovation for Tuberculosis Vaccine Discovery grant.
“Tuberculosis is an infectious disease that causes immense human mortality and suffering for thousands of years. This collaboration is exciting because we are bringing scientists with different expertise together to tackle this challenge”, according to Associate Professor Gillian Beamer, VMD, PhD.
The researchers at AAHI are developing several TB vaccine candidates. They are building on extensive experience designing protein and RA vaccine candidates based on AAHI’s immune-enhancing platforms incorporating adjuvant technology. Adjuvants are technology in which components make vaccines more effective by enhancing the body’s immune response.
As these TB vaccines advance further, AAHI researchers plan to investigate different ways to make them thermostable, so they can last for several months at room temperature or several years in standard refrigerators. This would eliminate the need for extreme cold storage as was required for the first generation of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.