Shigella Vaccine Research

(startupticker.ch, July 29, 2013)

The Gram-negative bacterium Shigella is a major causative agent of Shigellosis, a diarrheal disease mostly affecting children under five in low-income countries. Infection causes an estimated 1.1 million deaths annually. GlycoVaxyn AG, a leader in the development of innovative conjugate vaccines, has won the Wellcome Trust’s Strategic Translation Award, worth CHF 5.1 million, to finance its program to develop a Shigella bioconjugate vaccine. It has also signed collaborations with GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals (GSK) and Janssen Pharmaceuticals (JPI). The funding will enable human safety and challenge studies in healthy adults to confirm the efficacy of a monovalent Shigella flexneri 2a vaccine, before testing a multivalent vaccine in field studies in children. Clinical trials are scheduled to start in 2014 in the USA.