Cobra's oral vaccine shown to offer greater protection in mice against anthrax
Cobra Biomanufacturing, a UK-based international manufacturer of biopharmaceuticals, has reported on the results of research with the UK Ministry of Defence agency DSTL (Defence Science and Technology Laboratory) on the use of the company's oral vaccination technology in an anthrax vaccine.
Cobra Biomanufacturing, a UK-based international manufacturer of biopharmaceuticals, has reported on the results of research with the UK Ministry of Defence agency DSTL (Defence Science and Technology Laboratory) on the use of the company's oral vaccination technology in an anthrax vaccine.
The experiments conducted by DSTL at Portadown, UK and funded by Ploughshare Innovations, demonstrated that the Salmonella-based oral ORT-VAC vaccines containing stable plasmids expressing a vaccine antigen offered significantly greater protection in mice against a lethal strain of anthrax, compared with the alternative approach of placing the vaccine gene on the bacterial chromosome. Cobra said this is because ORT-VAC enables a higher vaccine dose to be delivered.
Cobra's chief executive Simon Saxby said the results were "very encouraging".
The ORT-VAC technology can convert any suitable bacterial strain to an antibiotic-free strain for DNA and recombinant protein vaccine delivery in humans. ORT-VAC vaccines will have applications in cancer, HIV, malaria and avian influenza, as well as diseases such as bubonic plague and anthrax. The ultimate goal of the ORT-VAC programme is to avoid the cold storage, complicated logistics and needle-based administration of conventional vaccines by the development of a stable, oral "vaccine pill".
The data was published in the journal Microbial Pathogenesis, together with an earlier DSTL-supported study on a Salmonella-based oral ORT-VAC plague vaccine.
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