Oxford Uni partners Enesi Pharma on vaccine against plague

Enesi Pharma develops unique injectable solid dose drug-device vaccine products. They have teamed up with scientists at the Oxford University’s Oxford Vaccine Group to create and test a stable and easy-to-use solid dose vaccine against plague, using Enesi’s ImplaVax® needle-free technology and a proprietary vaccine against the bacteria causing plague developed by OVG, based on a ChAdOx adenovirus vector. The plan is not only to develop it for use in parts of the world where there are outbreaks of plague, but also to stockpile for rapid deployment in the case of a potential bioterrorism incident.
Professor Christine Rollier, Oxford Vaccine Group, University of Oxford, said: “Vaccination represents a foundation of healthcare globally and our goal at OVG is to apply innovation to ensure people are protected from serious but preventable diseases wherever they live. We are pleased therefore that the collaboration with Enesi, through ImplaVax and solid dose vaccines, potentially offers an approach that could help address this challenge.”
Enesi CEO, David Hipkiss, said: “We are thrilled to enter this new collaboration with Professor Christine Rollier and the University of Oxford. This is our first collaboration to develop vaccines for infectious diseases based on adenovirus vectors and represents important progress with our broad strategy to assess the potential of our ImplaVax technology with the major immunogenic platforms on which global vaccines are based. Plague is a clear priority for governments and public health organisations around the world and there is a real need for a vaccine where none currently exists. We look forward to advancing this exciting project with OVG and benefiting from their insight to the requirements for successful vaccine development.”