Modern vaccines for animal health

Intervacc’s mission is to develop modern, efficient and safe vaccines for animal health. Especially vaccines against economically important bacterial infections in animals. The possibilities of using molecular biological methods to examine disease-causing bacteria’s genome has over the past decade increased significantly.

Project portfolio

Strangvac - our strangles vaccine projectINV274 a vaccine candidate against infections caused by Strep suis INV412 a vaccine candidate against mastitis caused by Staph aureus

Our project portfolio currently consists of three projects, Strangvac®, INV274 against Strep. suis and INV412 for Staph. aureus. The development of the company’s first vaccine candidate, Strangvac®, which is a vaccine against strangles, has gone through clinical trials. Good protective effect against a disease, that has lacked both a safe and effective vaccine, was demonstrated. The Company’s Marketing Authorization Application (MAA) for review of Strangvac® has now been submitted to the European Medicines Agency (EMA).

Technology

The technology platform is based on research at the Karolinska Institute and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and the company’s first vaccine candidate, Strangvac®, is developed with this technology. The technology is based on recombinant proteins instead of killed, or attenuated microorganisms, which are used in conventional vaccines. This reduces the risk of serious side effects. The concept used, to link together the most important parts of various bacterial surface proteins to fusion proteins, is suited also for other future vaccines in the same way as Strangvac®. In this way, several key surface proteins are incorporated into a small number of vaccine components.

DIVA potential

The proteins in our vaccines for animal health give rise to a specific and protective antibody response that differs from the antibody response following natural infection. This means that it is possible to distinguish between an animal that has received a vaccine and one that is or has had infection. This capacity is called DIVA (Differentiation between Infected and Vaccinated Animals) and is a invaluable feature during an outbreak when it is important to distinguish vaccinated animals from those with a previous history of infection. A vaccine based on a killed or an attenuated microorganism gives rise to the same serological antibody response as the disease itself. Such a vaccine, without DIVA capability, can thus be difficult to use in circumstances where you want to identify and limit the spread of infection by using serological testing.

Patents

The company owns four patent families. The patent families include a total of 23 issued patents in various countries and seven additional patents pending. These patents have the primary objective of protecting the company’s vaccine product (s) Strangvac®. Along with the positive results of the clinical studies, we have demonstrated a “proof of concept” for our core technology.

Overall, Intervacc possess technology, in-house expertise and strategic collaborations to take a project from the research stage to the finished product.