Vaccines
The Company is developing DEEP vaccines for viral, bacterial, and parasitic infectious diseases, as well as cancer and other pathologies.
DEEP™ takes advantage of Peptimmune’s know-how in the solid-phase manufacturing of complex peptide mixtures. The technology combines the epitope specificity of a fixed-sequence peptide with the randomness of a broadly immune-interactive copolymer. DEEP is derived from iterative screening, positional scanning peptide libraries, altered peptide ligands, dendrimers/MAPs, and random-sequence copolymers. The DEEP technology can be used to improve the efficacy of vaccines against pathogen-associated epitopes.
Inactivated pathogen vaccines against infectious agents such as viral, bacterial, and parasitic diseases are harder to develop due to the agent’s ability to evade host detection by “immune evasion.” Adjuvants such as alum are used to boost immune activity with vaccines that are antigen/epitope non-specific.
DEEP technology can be used to improve the efficacy of vaccines against pathogen-associated epitopes by more broadly up-regulating immune response against a specific infectious-agent epitope. DEEP can produce copolymers that contain a self-adjuvant-like effect, thus minimizing the importance of extensive formulation development. DEEP copolymers have the capability to mitigate immune evasion and to break tolerance against pathogen-associated epitopes.
Current Vaccine Development
- Ability of infectious agents to evade immune system
- Rapid permutation of infectious strains
- Adjuvants needed to boost immune responses with vaccines
The Company is developing DEEP vaccines for viral, bacterial, and parasitic infectious diseases, as well as cancer and other pathologies.
