GENVEC WINS $53 MILLION CONTRACT WITH NIH FOR HIV VACCINE

Biopharmaceutical company GenVec has announced it could receive up to $53 million under a new five-year contract with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to support the transfer of its manufacturing and purification processes to the NIH Vaccine Research Center (VRC). The move would further clinical development of an HIV vaccine, including the development of a larger-scale manufacturing and product-release process necessary for further HIV vaccine production.

The VRC Vaccine Pilot Plant produces materials for clinical research. As a part of this new contract, the VRC has agreed to take a non-exclusive research license to GenVec's proprietary adenovector, production cell line, manufacturing process and formulation technologies for HIV vaccines, allowing for the production of next-generation HIV vaccines.

GenVec has collaborated on HIV vaccine development with the VRC for several years using its adenovector technologies. Under a separate contract, GenVec has produced the adenovector-based HIV vaccine currently in Phase II clinical testing at its contract manufacturer, Molecular Medicine BioServices. Data from recent studies indicate that the vaccine has been well-tolerated and, when administered in combination with a DNA plasmid prime, elicits a broad antibody and T-cell immune response.