Mymetics says National Institutes of Health to test HIV-AIDS vaccine candidate in primates

By E. Janene Geiss

Philadelphia, March 10 - Mymetics Corp. announced Friday that the National Institutes of Health has agreed to begin testing of the company's proprietary HIV-AIDS mucosal prophylactic vaccine candidate.

The preclinical study will test Mymetics' vaccine in a primate model, according to a company news release.

This study will take place in parallel to Mymetics' ongoing preclinical trial in another primate model. The company's study was recently initiated in collaboration with the Cochin Institute in Paris, the Institute of Laboratory Animal Science of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and the Faculty of Laboratory Animal Sciences of the Peking Union Medical College in Beijing.

Mymetics said it also announced that the company will present results of an earlier-stage preclinical study at the Keystone HIV Vaccines symposium being held this month in Keystone, Colo.

In this earlier study, Mymetics said its vaccine elicited antibodies in the blood and other important anatomical compartments, such as internal mucosal surfaces, considered to be primary HIV entry sites.

The mucosal antibodies showed high potency in vitro at inhibiting transcytosis of laboratory and primary HIV viruses from different HIV strains, including those prevalent in Western countries and in Africa and parts of Asia, officials said.

The company said it will announce detailed results at the conference.

"In the company's concurrent trials, we will seek to confirm the results of the previous preclinical study demonstrating production of high levels of antibodies. If successful, we will then conduct a challenge study to determine the ability of these antibodies to protect against HIV in the primate models," Sylvain Fleury, chief scientific officer, said in the release.

The results of the primate trials can be expected by the first quarter of 2007, officials said. Pending positive findings, the company said it then will proceed to file with the FDA to begin pilot human clinical testing.

The company's HIV-AIDS prophylactic vaccine candidate program combines the company's HIV-1 gp41-based immunogen expertise with virosome technology developed by Pevion Biotech AG of Switzerland, a spin-off from Berna AG and Bachem AG.

Virosome-based vaccines are market-approved, stable lipidic structures that act as carriers for peptides or proteins toward which an immune protection is desired. Virosomes have a high safety profile with few side effects and have already been distributed by Pevion Biotech AG and administered to millions of people around the world, officials said.

Mymetics is a biopharmaceutical company based in Nyon, Switzerland.

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