Enesi Pharma to collaborate with Sementis

Australian biotech Sementis and UK’s Enesi Pharma are to collaborate on developing solid dose versions of the former’s lead peanut hypoallergy vaccine and its chikungunya/Zika vaccine candidates. Enesi will formulate solid dose implants based on vaccines provided by Sementis, while Sementis will undertake safety and immunogenicity testing, and preclinical development.

Enesi’s CEO, David Hipkiss, said: “The collaboration to develop a solid dose version of these vaccines for use with our ImplaVax needle-free device offers the potential to deliver a robust and effective product addressing significant global health challenges. We are seeing increasing interest from all areas of the vaccine and public health industries based on the potential benefits that ImplaVax could provide to improve vaccination.”

Dr Paul Howley, CEO, CSO, Director and Co-Founder of Sementis, said: “We are very confident that the ImplaVax technology will work extremely well with our vaccine vector technology to reduce, or even eliminate, the reliance on maintaining a cold-chain environment from manufacture to point-of-care, and possibly providing long-term stability to our vaccines. Also, Enesi’s technology may eliminate the need for highly trained healthcare workers to administer our vaccine as no injection is required. We will be evaluating this technology with one of our infectious disease vaccines and one of our hypoallergy vaccine candidates and if proven to expectations the ImplaVax technology will be applicable to all of Sementis vaccines covering infectious disease, allergies and cancers.”

A joint statement said: “An ImplaVax-enabled product using the Sementis SCV chikungunya/Zika vaccine offers the potential to provide long-lasting immunity and retain potency across a wide range of storage conditions for prolonged periods.”