Vaccine development company Mymetics Corp. (OTCBB: MYMX) today announced the acquisition of a malaria vaccine from Previon Biotech AG, a privately owned Swiss biopharmaceutical company. The preventative vaccine was successfully completed in human clinical trial phases I and II in Switzerland and the UK; more studies are to follow.
“We are pleased with this acquisition which allows us to start feeding a pipeline of products for the future, in addition to our preventive HIV/AIDS vaccine,” Christian J. F. Rochet, CEO and president of Mymetics Corp. stated in the press release. “There is a pressing need within the global community for a malaria vaccine. Annually, there are between three hundred and five hundred million people suffering from malaria with a mortality rate of approximately two million, mostly children.”
The clinical trials resulted in two of four contemplated antigens. New trials will be conducted as the company completes its application for approval of the vaccine, in compliance with European Union regulations. A clinical trial has already commenced in Tanzania to use the protocol for children and teenagers where the risk of malaria is an endemic problem; phase I and II clinical trials with all four antigens is scheduled to follow.
“The clinical trial results proved very promising,” Sylvain Fleury, Ph.D, Mymetics CSO and director, stated. “Our vaccine philosophy is to focus the immune response on relevant regions of the parasite proteins by designing specific peptides, while irrelevant and immunodistractive parts have been removed. We also believe that the vaccine efficacy will be improved by targeting both parasite forms during the infectious cycle, instead of the classical strategy to target only one of the maturation stages.”
Ernst Lübke, the company’s CFO and director, said that aside from the health advantages of Previon, the vaccine poses little threat to shareholders because half of the acquisition price is related to upcoming milestones payable in 2009 and 2010.
“This is a deal that makes sense medically, economically and institutionally,” stated Lübke.
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