Vical get vital money for CMV

San Diego Biotech company Vical has received notification of funding for approximately $1m for research and development related to the company's plasmid DNA vaccine against cytomegalovirus (CMV) under two grants from the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

A six-month Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant of approximately $300,000 will partially fund preclinical safety and toxicity evaluation of the CMV vaccine in support of the company's planned Phase I human trial. An 18-month research grant of approximately $700,000 will partially fund novel assays to measure and characterize immune responses in volunteers participating in the trial. The trial and immunological assays will be conducted in collaboration with the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington.

'We are pleased to receive notification of NIH funding to support continued development of our CMV vaccine,' said Vical's president and ceo, Vijay Samant, 'which could help address the significant unmet need to prevent this serious disease, for which no vaccine is either approved or in late-stage development. The Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences has estimated the annual cost of treating CMV

infection in the United States at more than $4bn. CMV infection affects between 30-60% of the estimated 29,000 patients receiving bone marrow or solid organ transplants in the U.S. annually, causing transplant rejection, serious illness and even death if untreated. Expensive antiviral drug therapy is used to control the disease, but does not prevent or eliminate the infection. CMV infection causes severe consequences in about 3,600 infants and death in about 400 each year in the US. We look forward to beginning our initial clinical trial in healthy volunteers in 2004.