The H7N9 avian flu outbreak in China might have a vaccine courtesy of a Research Triangle Park tenant.
Vaccine developer Medicago (TSX: MDG) says it has successfully produced a vaccine candidate for the H7N9 virus. The company developed the vaccine using its proprietary technology that manufactures vaccine-like particles (VLP) from the leaves of tobacco plants. Medicago’s technology offers the advantage of producing vaccines in a much shorter time frame compared to the up to six months needed to develop vaccines from eggs.
“To our knowledge, Medicago is the first to produce a VLP vaccine candidate against this potential pandemic strain demonstrating our ability to be a first responder in a pandemic scenario,” Medicago President and CEO Andy Sheldon said in a statement.
Quebec City, Canada-based Medicago operates its largest manufacturing facility in RTP. The facility was supported by a $21 million contract from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, which was was seeking scalable manufacturing capabilities for vaccines to respond to virus outbreaks. Medicago has met all of the technical requirements for the contract and the company is now allowed to bid on work manufacturing and delivering vaccines based on its tobacco-based technology.
New contracts would help bring in more revenue for Medicago, which now draws most of its revenue from research agreements. First quarter revenue was $419,258 Canadian, up 1.6 percent compared to the first quarter of 2012. Medicago reported a first quarter loss of $8.7 million Canadian, compared to $8.9 million Canadian in the first quarter in the prior year.
As of March 31, the company has $15.3 million in cash and equivalents, up from $4.0 million at the end of 2012.
