BioWorld International Correspondent
GlycoVaxyn AG raised CHF11.5 million (US$9.6 million) in a Series A round for development of its preclinical conjugated vaccines, which are based on a proprietary technology that offers a simpler and cheaper alternative to current covalent linking methods.
The Schlieren, Switzerland-based company was spun out of the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich in 2004 to commercialize a proprietary method for glycosylating bacterial proteins. That is based on work on the characterization and cloning of the N-terminal protein glycosylation apparatus of the bacterial species Campylobacter jejuni, carried out by company co-founder Michael Wacker in Markus Aebi's lab in ETH Zurich. The species, a common foodborne pathogen, is unusual among bacteria, all of which were up until recently regarded as being incapable of producing glycoproteins.
One of the key papers describing the work appeared in Science in 2002 under the title: "N-Linked Glycosylation in Campylobacter jejuni and Its Functional Transfer into E. coli."
At its heart is a single C. jejuni glycosyl transferase enzyme, which can be expressed in E. coli, along with a gene encoding a carrier protein. "The substrate specificity of the glycosyl transferase is quite relaxed," GlycoVaxyn co-founder and head of corporate development Urs Tuor told BioWorld International. That means it could theoretically generate a broad diversity of conjugated vaccines.
Conjugated vaccines, which generally consist of weakly immunogenic bacterial polysaccharides linked to an antigenic carrier protein, now comprise about 25 percent of the global vaccines market, according to GlycoVaxyn. A large chunk of that percentage can be attributed to the blockbuster Streptococcus pneumoniae vaccine Prevnar, developed by Madison, N.J.-based Wyeth. It accounted for more than $1.9 billion in sales in 2006.
The company does not have that particular franchise in its sights, however. "Our pitch is not to say we are producing a Prevnar even more cheaply because we have a simpler process," Tuor said.
GlycoVaxyn's strategy is based around extending the reach of conjugated vaccines into markets that previously could not afford them and into bacterial pathogens that are not amenable to current approaches. "We are addressing either diseases that occur mostly in the developing world or we can address diseases in the industrialized world where the markets have been too diverse to address with such a complicate process ," he said.
The type and composition of the polysaccharide structures targeted have a bearing on the efficiency of its method. Wyeth already has developed a highly optimized process for Prevnar, Tuor said. The GlycoVaxyn approach would require further development to match it.
What it can do is provide a more streamlined production process for those structures - and bacterial species - that are not readily amenable to currently available technologies. According to GlycoVaxyn, it can reduce the current process, which comprises two fermentation runs and four purification steps, to a single fermentation run and a single purification step.
The company's lead vaccine development program is targeting an undisclosed bacterial pathogen that causes diarrhea. It has demonstrated proof of concept in an animal study that demonstrated immunogenicity, and it will conduct additional animal trials to generate toxicity data. "We are capable of producing the material at lab scale," Tuor said. Trials in man are still some way off, however. "Which serotypes we will address will be determined by market studies we have [yet] to do," he said.
The company also could direct its technology toward the production of therapeutic proteins and cancer vaccines, Tuor said, but the possibility is not being considered under its present level of funding.
Lead investors in the present round are Paris-based Soffinova Partners and Geneva-based Index Ventures, each of which participated in the company's seed round last year. The company also has appointed former deputy CEO of Paris-based Aventis Pasteur Michel Gréco as chairman.