Generex Receives Australian Patent for Novel Vaccine Technology

Generex Biotechnology has announced that its wholly owned subsidiary, Antigen Express, has received Australian Patent No. 778115 titled, "Hybrid Peptides Modulate the Immune Response."

Antigen Express is designing and testing such vaccine peptides for the control of cancer and infectious diseases with a particular focus on the pandemic H5N1 influenza, which has been reported in South East Asia.

The specific award covers the use of vaccine peptides composed of the immunoregulatory Ii-Key peptide joined through a simple chemical spacer to MHC class II epitope peptides. Such hybrid peptides have about 200 times greater potency in vitro than the epitope-only peptide. In mouse vaccine experiments, such hybrids induce four-to-eight times greater T helper cell responses, when measured by special T helper cell assays.