Researchers license rights to potential chlamydia vaccine
BioVeris Corporation of Gaithersburg, Md., has entered into an exclusive, worldwide license agreement with UMass Amherst for patent rights to a proprietary vaccine candidate for chlamydia, the most frequently reported infectious disease in the United States. Under the agreement, the company has licensed exclusive rights to commercialize products for possible use in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of all chlamydial infections.
BioVeris will pay a $75,000 license issue fee, milestone fees including for initiating and completing human clinical trials and securing regulatory approvals, patent costs, and royalties on product sales, including a minimum annual royalty of $40,000 commencing in 2007.
In May, the company and UMass Amherst entered into a separate sponsored research agreement with the campus’s Carbohydrate Based Vaccine (CBV) Group, composed of faculty members Lloyd Semprevivo, Elizabeth Stuart and Wilmore Webley under which the company is sponsoring up to $600,000 of research through 2006 aimed at developing a vaccine. The vaccine under investigation uses a pan-genus antigen that could be effective in preventing infections caused by most or all species of chlamydia. Semprevivo is a faculty member in Veterinary and Animal Sciences. Stuart and Webley hold positions in Microbiology.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, chlamydia is the most frequently reported infectious disease in the U.S., with estimates of nearly 3 million cases annually, resulting in a total health care cost, estimated by the Institute of Medicine, of more than $2 billion.
Although antibiotic therapy is available, chlamydia is a “silent” disease, showing no symptoms in three quarters of infected women and half of infected men. If left untreated in women, 40 percent of the infections will cause pelvic inflammatory disease with permanent damage, resulting in chronic pain, infertility and potentially fatal ectopic pregnancy. Infected pregnant women may transmit the infection to the eyes and respiratory tracts of their newborn, resulting in pneumonia and conjunctivitis. It has been estimated that by age 30, half of all sexually active women have been infected. Screening is recommended annually for all sexually active women under 26 years of age, as well as older women with certain risk factors, and all pregnant women.
There is no vaccine currently available to protect against chlamydia. The campus’s vaccine technology is expected to cover all chlamydial infections, including those caused by Chlamydia psittaci, which often results in pneumonia and endocarditis in humans, and Chlamydia pneumoniae, which is responsible for some pneumonia, bronchitis, pharyngitis, laryngitis, and sinusitis. In addition, C. pneumoniae infections have been implicated by some investigators to be associated with atherosclerotic vascular disease, Alzheimer’s disease, asthma, and reactive arthritis. The future market for worldwide sales of chlamydia vaccines has been estimated by industry analysts to exceed $1 billion annually.
BioVeris Corp. is an integrated health care company developing proprietary technologies in diagnostics and vaccinology.
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BioVeris Corp.
December 8, 2005.
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