Themis bags vaccine license

12.07.2016 - Vienna-based vaccine specialist Themis Bioscience GmbH has secured broad access to a promising virus vaccine vector tech by extending its license agreement with French Institut Pasteur. Its goal: to develop a Zika vaccine.

Themis and Institut Pasteur have already shown the safety and tolerability of the vector in a Phase I trial for a Chikungunya vaccine. The first-in-class vaccine will enter Phase II this year. Now Themis plans to apply the same platform to develop a Zika vaccine and announced that it has extended the existing license agreement with Institut Pasteur accordingly. And Zika is only the first in a row of highly relevant vaccine indications it plans to develop, the Austrian company said. 

The core technology was developed at the Institut Pasteur in Paris and is licensed to Themis. It uses a measles virus vaccine backbone, which suggests an excellent safety and immunogenicity profile as well as an efficient production process. Genes coding for selected antigens from a foreign infectious agent, like for example a Chikungunya virus, have been inserted into the genome of this well-established vaccine. The measles-vaccine vector delivers the foreign antigens directly to macrophages and dendritic cells – the most potent and effective antigen-presenting cells, thereby triggering a specific immune response to the foreign bug. This results in a powerful, specific immune response, which is most likely to confer long-term immunity as does the measles vaccine.

Under the terms of the new agreement, Themis will have extensive rights to use the vaccine vector technology in a variety of vaccine indications.

“The potential of this vaccine vector is enormous,” commented Isabelle Buckle, Executive Vice President Technology Transfer & Industrial Partnerships at Institut Pasteur. “Themis' competence in the fast and focused development of promising vaccine candidates will now fully exploit this potential for the development of vaccines against multiple indications. As a first step we prioritise and accelerate the development of our prophylactic Zika vaccine candidate under a collaboration with Themis, which will address the worldwide growing concern about the emerging Zika threat.” 

“We are intending to begin clinical trials within the next twelve months,” explained Erich Tauber, CEO and founder of Themis.