ARTES successfully completed EU funded project Plurivax

ARTES Biotechnology explored very effective in a SME consortium vaccine developments for veterinary applications.
Under the titel: “ERA-Net EuroTransBio-8: PLURIVAX, development of a virus-like-particle (VLP) based vaccine platform and stable formulation especially suited for the veterinary applications, the EU cooperation was part of the 8th EuroTransBio call and was funded in the time period from June 2014 to November 2017 by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the Flanders (Belgium) agency for Innovation by Science and Technology (IWT).
For the development of vaccines for human applications it is state of the art to use virus-like particles (VLPs) as a vehicle. The use of these particles has the advantage that they as such not being infectious but that they transport foreign antigens in an ideal way to the immune system. These very effective and simple mechanism was the backbone of the PLURIVAX project.
“As initial nucleus our proprietary VLP platform METAVAX® was taken. This platform has already been applied to the development of adjuvant-free vaccine candidates against different human relating diseases like flu, malaria and HIV”, Michael Piontek, managing director of ARTES stated. “Our expression host, the methylotrophic yeast Hansenula polymorpha, is the preferred technology for affordable mass vaccination and is recommended by the WHO for mass vaccinations. Combination of our both platforms build an excellent approach to low-cost mass production of safe and effective vaccines.”
ARTES chose eight different, large molecular weight antigens derived from four animal‑ infecting viruses. The bovine viral diarrhea virus (BVDV) as an important pathogen of cattle, also infecting sheep and pigs. The classical swine fever virus (CSFV), which is acknowledged as a global threat for swine and is listed as notifiable animal diseases by the World Organization for Animal Health. The feline leukemia virus (FeLV) as a retrovirus threatening domestic cats and the west nile virus (WNV) which is a mosquito vector transmitted zoonotic virus of the Flaviviridae family. WNV circulates in birds as natural hosts but can be transmitted to mammals including humans causing west nile fever.
First results were released in a scientific paper under the title “Establishment of a yeast-based VLP platform for antigen presentation” (Wetzel et al. Microb Cell Fact (2018) 17:17 )
and more information could be get on https://doi.org/10.1186/s12934-018-0868-0

Future steps are, that in close discussions with global veterinary vaccine manufacturer, ARTES’ explores the commercial application of the results and of the platform in general.