OUR PLATFORM
Our Approach to Stimulating the Immune System for Infectious Disease Protection
BWV Norovirus (NoV) S&P Nanoparticle Versatile Vaccine Platform
Bioengineering the shell (S) and protruding (P) domains of the norovirus capsid protein, polyvalent nanoparticles and polymers/oligomers provide a versatile vaccine platform with wide applications
Our S&P platform was co-invented by two researchers, Xi Jason Jiang, Ph.D., and Ming Tan, Ph.D., of the Division of Infectious Disease at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. The pre-clinical research conducted at CHMC provided encouraging data that we believe supports investigation and development of the platform for our vaccine candidates. The S&P platform combines two or more immunogenic components, a norovirus antigen plus at least one additional antigen, together creating novel constructs. The norovirus nanoparticle enhances immunogenicity
Key Elements of our Platform
We are leveraging our disruptive norovirus nanoparticle platform to develop novel, broad-spectrum vaccines for adult and child infectious disease prevention by taking advantage of:
• Flexible and Scalable discovery platform engine. We believe we are able to design and create novel vaccines that are stable and scalable for broad spectrum prophylactics. Through this platform’s adaptability, we may opportunistically expand our pipeline and potentially collaborate with third parties for additional vaccines, as well as therapeutics.
•. Cost-effective and Rapid Production of Novel Vaccines. We are potentially able to reduce the cost and time to manufacture a vaccine candidate by utilizing an E.coli expression platform, compared to traditional vaccine production which uses other, longer production-time platforms, such as Chinese Hamster Ovary (CHO) cells. We have bioengineered these nanoparticles to be stable and effective, determined through animal immunogenicity studies, using E.coli expression, which may provide cost savings and efficiency compared to other VLPs needing a eukaryotic expression system (Pharmaceutics 2019, 11, 472; doi:10.3390/pharmaceutics11090472).
•. Multi-antigen and Pathogen Capabilities. The power of our platform is its ability to carry multiple antigens at a time, thereby creating a multi-targeted vaccine. It also provides the opportunity to develop vaccines for protection against not only viral pathogens, but also bacterial, parasitic and fungal pathogens.
• Therapeutic potential. We believe our platform may offer opportunities to develop non-infectious disease therapeutic products, for example, being used as a carrier or vehicle to transport drugs to specific target locations.
Xia M, Huang P, Sun C, Han L, Vago FS, Li K, Zhong W, Jiang W, Klassen JS, Jiang X, Tan M. Bioengineered Norovirus S60 Nanoparticles as a Multifunctional Vaccine Platform. ACS Nano. 2018 Nov 27;12(11):10665-10682.
Tan M, Jiang X. Norovirus Capsid Protein-Derived Nanoparticles and Polymers as Versatile Platforms for Antigen Presentation and Vaccine Development. Pharmaceutics. 2019 Sep 12;11(9):472