Selecta Biosciences, Inc. has been awarded a $3 million grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), an institute within the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), for the development of an enhanced therapeutic nicotine vaccine for the treatment of smoking cessation and relapse prevention.

The grant will support the funding of a clinical drug candidate from Selecta’s pipeline, and assist with advancing a nicotine vaccine through early clinical development. The award is provided under the BRDG-SPAN program (Biomedical Research and Development and Growth To Spur the Acceleration of New Technologies Pilot Program), which is designed to bridge the gap between R&D and commercialization for promising new medical technologies.

Selecta’s tSVP technology offers a new approach to a nicotine vaccine designed to boost immune responses, or nicotine antibody titers, beyond previous technologies. Selecta’s tSVP immunomodulatory nanoparticles aim to induce highly predictable immune responses, for durable effect in smoking cessation.

“We are delighted that NIDA has recognized the uniqueness and potential advantages of Selecta’s synthetic therapeutic vaccines and has elected to support Selecta’s tSVP nicotine vaccine, in a very competitive process, to address the enormous unmet medical need of smoking cessation,” said Werner Cautreels, Ph.D., chief executive officer of Selecta Biosciences. “We view a nicotine vaccine as one of our promising programs that are poised to advance into human clinical trials based on our progress with Selecta’s technology platform.”