Description:
The technology offered for licensing is foundational in the area of recombinant DNA vaccines. In the last several years, facilitated through a licensing program of the NIH, the technology has been broadly applied in the development and commercialization of several novel human and veterinary vaccines in the areas of infectious disease as well as cancer therapeutics. The NIH wishes to expand its licensing program of the subject technology in a variety of applications that will benefit public health.
Briefly, the technology describes and claims methods of constructing recombinant vaccines utilizing any recombinant poxvirus, and in particular vaccinia virus (i.e. Modified Vaccinia Ankara or other strains) as a backbone that carries a foreign DNA. The foreign DNA can be related to a viral pathogen for example, or to a tumor-associated antigen. Upon administration of the recombinant virus to a human or animal subject, the foreign gene is expressed in vivo to elicit an immune response against the respective pathogen or the respective tumor.
The technology takes advantage of the unique properties of poxviruses as a delivering vehicle and of the ease of preparation of such constructs.
The applications of this technology have been extensively covered by many publications, including more than 100 publications from the inventor (see sampling below). The publications cover a wide variety of vaccines such as HIV, papilloma virus, influenza and others.
Note: Samples of plasmids and vaccinia virus used in the invention are deposited in the American Type Culture Collection and in the NIH and may be available for licensees upon request.