Novartis eyes genomics route for flu vaccines
pharmafile | October 11, 2010 | News story | Manufacturing and Production, Research and Development | Novartis, Synthetic Genomics Vaccines, genomics
Novartis will make use of a technology developed by Synthetic Genomics Vaccines, a new company set up by genomics pioneer Craig Venter, to accelerate the production of the influenza seed strains required for flu vaccine manufacturing.
As a result, Novartis expects to significantly reduce the time it takes to ramp up production of new vaccines, allowing it to respond more quickly if an emerging flu strain threatens to cause a pandemic.
Currently, Novartis and other vaccines companies rely on the World Health Organization (WHO) to identify and distribute live reference viruses to create seasonal or pandemic vaccines.
Under the terms of the collaboration with SGVI, Novartis will develop a bank of synthetically constructed seed viruses ready to go into production as soon as the WHO identifies a flu strain. The bank could be ready for use as early as next year, according to Rino Rappuoli, chief of vaccine research at the Swiss drugmaker.
Novartis estimates that SVGI’s technology could reduce vaccine production times by up to two months, which could be critical in the event of a pandemic but also of value in speeding up the production of seasonal flu vaccines.
The two companies have initially agreed to a three-year collaboration that will be supported by funding by the US government’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA).
The new deal extends Novartis’ collaboration with Venter in vaccine research, which goes back almost a decade. The company’s scientists have worked with the J Craig Venter Institute in the area of “reverse vaccinology”, a technique which relies on the gene sequencing of multiple viral strains in order to identify genes and therefore proteins which could make good targets for vaccine development.
More recently, JCVI scientists have showed that it is possible to not only design a synthetic genome based on bioinformatics and construct it in the lab, but also that the genome can infect host cells and self-replicate.
SGVI’s technologies are derived from the JCVI approach and could be used to develop universal vaccines against a wide range of infectious disease agents, in addition to influenza, according to Novartis.
Phil Taylor
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