Farshad Guirakhoo, chief scientific officer at GeoVax, said, “The studies funded by this grant are building upon previous work that demonstrates the protective efficacy of recombinant vaccines using GeoVax’s MVA live viral vector. We are particularly excited about GEO-ZM02, which has demonstrated 100% single-dose protection in normal mice against a lethal dose of ZIKV delivered by intracerebral inoculation at the CDC laboratories in Fort Collins, CO. GEO-ZM02 not only has the potential of a single-dose vaccine, which is practical to combat epidemics in resource-strained countries, but also does not bear the risk of enhancing other flavivirus infections, such as Dengue serotypes 1-4, in vaccinated subjects.”
05.24.18
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has awarded GeoVax Labs, Inc. a Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) grant in support of its novel Zika vaccine development program. The grant award of $300,000 will fund the second year of a two-year project period with a total budget of $600,000.
The grant, entitled “Advanced Preclinical Testing of a Novel Recombinant Vaccine Against Zika Virus”, supports advanced preclinical testing of GeoVax’s vaccine candidate (designated GEO-ZM02) in non-human primates in preparation for human clinical trials. GEO-ZM02 is a novel vaccine approach to protect against Zika virus (ZIKV), using GeoVax’s Modified Vaccinia Ankara (MVA) vector to express the ZIKV non-structural protein 1 (NS1).
The grant, entitled “Advanced Preclinical Testing of a Novel Recombinant Vaccine Against Zika Virus”, supports advanced preclinical testing of GeoVax’s vaccine candidate (designated GEO-ZM02) in non-human primates in preparation for human clinical trials. GEO-ZM02 is a novel vaccine approach to protect against Zika virus (ZIKV), using GeoVax’s Modified Vaccinia Ankara (MVA) vector to express the ZIKV non-structural protein 1 (NS1).
