Fraunhofer to deploy iBio vaccine science

Gates Foundation funds research program

At the Fraunhofer Center for Molecular Biotechnology in Newark, scientists infuse nicotiana tobacco plants with genes to produce proteins they hope will one day immunize people from such diseases as bird flu, malaria, and trypanosomiasis -- or African sleeping sickness.

It's a technology that promises to create batches of vaccines in weeks rather than months, and one that was developed by Fraunhofer, a nonprofit, for iBio, a neighboring biopharmaceutical company in Newark.

Under an agreement announced last week, iBio said it is licensing that science back to Fraunhofer to create vaccines for -- and using millions in financing from -- the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The Gates Foundation hopes the vaccines will be used to immunize residents of developing countries who can't afford adequate preventive treatment.

IBio will own the rights to market new technology -- or improvements -- that come out of the program, iBio said.

"The attributes of our technology -- including rapid response to pandemic disease threats, surge capacity, and scalable manufacturing facilities with much lower capital and operating costs -- should enable the foundation to achieve its objective to provide vaccines to vast populations that have been neglected until now," said Robert Kay, iBio's chairman, in a statement last week.

The Gates Foundation has provided more than $20 million for Fraunhofer scientists in Delaware to research and develop vaccines for malaria, avian flu and sleeping sickness.

The U.S. Department of Defense has also funded research at Fraunhofer's Newark center. The government is interested particularly in the ability to create vaccines quickly in the case of a pandemic -- delivering an H1N1 vaccine in a matter of weeks during an outbreak, for example.

In its third round of funding, Fraunhofer received $4.4 million in March from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to develop an H1N1 vaccine using the plant-based process.

Fraunhofer expects to move into Phase 1 clinical trials by the end of this year, testing its bird flu and H1N1 vaccines on humans, said Robert Erwin, iBio's president. Some early-stage testing of a potential vaccine for the sleeping sickness has already been performed on cattle. Vidadi Yusibov, executive director of Fraunhofer's Newark center, said timelines for testing potential vaccines are sensitive, and would not discuss them.