Nantes – Paris – France, 19th of June, 2018 – In-Cell-Art (ICA), a biotechnology company specialized in nanocarrier technologies, BioNet-Asia (BNA), an innovative vaccine developer, and the research team led by Dr. Anavaj Sakuntabhai at the Functional Genetics of Infectious Diseases Unit, Institut Pasteur Paris France, (GFMI-IP), announce today the promising development of Nanotaxi® formulated DNA vaccine to induce strong immune response against dengue virus, after successful preclinical study.
Under this collaboration, ICA, thanks to Nanotaxi® designed to unlock the promise of nucleic acids to treat diseases, and Dr. Sakuntabhai, with his expertise on genetic susceptibility to mosquito-borne infection, created a single component pentavalent dengue-Zika vaccine preventing antibody-dependent enhancement phenomenon. This project has been selected to be funded by the Scientific Council of the Southeast Asia-Europe Joint Funding Scheme and was praised for its clear vision, uniqueness and expert team.
A monovalent DNA/Nanotaxi® vaccine was tested in the first instance for the evaluation of immune response against various epitopes of dengue virus and validated for its efficacy at the Institut Pasteur.
Bruno Pitard, a founder of In-Cell-Art, says “This is an important first milestone to realize a highly polyvalent vaccination strategy which can overcome the issues of genetic variation and antigenic diversity in dengue and Zika viruses. Our Nanotaxi® technology can deliver many DNA variants at once. This allows us to develop a single injection, which contains a set of diverse antigens that vary in key positions to induce immune responses with unprecedented breadth and potency.”