Frontier IP's The Vaccine Group gets grant for E.coli vaccine

University intellectual property commercialisation specialist Frontier IP announced on Wednesday that its portfolio company The Vaccine Group (TVG) has been awarded a £50,000 grant from the global Bacterial Vaccine Network, to support development of a vaccine to combat one of the main causes of bovine mastitis, E.coli.

The AIM-traded firm said TVG - a University of Plymouth spin-out - would use the grant to run a proof-of-concept study to investigate whether its novel platform technology could produce a safe-to-use vaccine that was cheaper and more effective than the vaccines currently available to farmers.

It said E.coli was one of three main bacteria that causes bovine mastitis, which costs the UK dairy industry £200m each year through reduced milk production and quality.

The disease was also described as a “serious problem” in low and middle-income countries which relied on milk as a staple food source.

An effective vaccine would remove the need for farmers to use antibiotics, and cut the risk of the bacteria developing antibiotic resistance.

TVG's novel technology was based on safe forms of herpesviruses, which occurred in nearly all animals, including humans.

Vaccines were created through modifying those benign viruses by inserting regions of the target pathogen to stimulate immune responses against the disease.

Other potential applications of the technology included vaccines to fight diseases that jumped from animals to humans, such as ebola, SARS, Marburg viruses, swine and bird flus.

The technology was being developed by Dr Michael Jarvis, associate professor of virology and immunology at the University of Plymouth's School of Biomedical Sciences, and his team.

Frontier IP said they were working in collaboration with a “global network” of academics and institutions.

Professor Alain Vanderplasschen of the Department of Infectious and Parasitic Diseases at the University of Liège, Belgium, was the main collaborator on the E.coli vaccine project.

“Networks such as BactiVac are critical in bringing together the necessary multidisciplinary expertise required to answer society's problems,” said TVG co-founder and director Dr Jarvis.

“The current project is using a vaccine against bacteria as means to control bacterial infections, but without antibiotics and associated antibiotic microbial resistance concerns.”

Frontier IP Group chief executive officer Neil Crabb added that the award from a “world-leading” vaccinology network provided “strong validation” of the technology being developed by The Vaccine Group, and its potential.

“We're delighted and look forward to the results of the proof-of-concept study and the opportunities they might provide for longer-term commercialisation,” Crabb said.