Henderson Morley to develop EBV vaccine with Australian Centre

Drug discovery company Henderson Morley is signing its second collaborative research and material transfer agreement with the Australian Centre for Vaccine Development (ACVD).

ACVD is part of the Queensland Institute of Medical Research. The collaboration will use a combination of technologies from Henderson Morley and ACVD. Each party shall bear its own development costs, and any new Intellectual Property arising out of this collaboration shall vest jointly in Henderson Morley and ACVD.

This collaborative research agreement will focus on the development of a prophylactic and therapeutic vaccine targeted at Epstein Barr Virus (EBV) and treating malignant disease caused by EBV - one of the most important cancers of viral origin.

The project aims to produce a new vaccine candidate targeted at numerous strains of EBV. The collaboration will use a combination of technologies from Henderson Morley and ACVD.

The collaborative project will use an EBV polyepitope antigen developed by the team at ACVD, incorporated into the PREPS and L-particles delivery vector, to produce a new vaccine candidate targeted at numerous strains of EBV.

ACVD director and associate professor Rajiv Khanna, a global authority on the development of an immune based vaccine and therapeutic against EBV induced malignancies, will be leading the collaboration at ACVD.

Development of vaccine strategies for EBV-associated cancers, nasopharyngeal cancer (NPC) and Hodgkin's Lymphoma (HL) is a major focus of the Australian Vaccine Institute. One such strategy is based on specifically enhancing human immune response to EBV proteins expressed in these cancers. Since both these cancers express identical viral proteins, it is anticipated that a common immunotherapeutic protocol may provide benefit to these patients. It is the use of these proteins together with PREPS and L-particles that is the basis for the current collaboration.

This agreement follows January's announcement that the ACVD will undertake the development of a vaccine targeted at preventing Cytomegalovirus (CMV) disease - the most important preventable infectious disease of unborn children in the developed world.

Andrew Knight, Henderson Morley's executive chairman, said: "We are very pleased to be working alongside ACVD again, which is a great testament to our team. This presents another exciting opportunity as we continue to develop our portfolio