Pharmaprojects R&D Pipeline News Feed
Acambis and Sanofi Pasteur join forces on a West Nile virus vaccine
28 Nov 2007
Sanofi Pasteur and the British vaccine development company Acambis have announced they have signed an agreement to collaborate on the development of Acambis’ West Nile virus vaccine, which uses Acambis’ ChimeriVax techonology. Under the terms of this exclusive worldwide development and marketing licence, Acambis stands to receive an upfront payment of US$10million from Sanofi, up to US$70million in pre- and post-marketing milestone payments, and funding for further development and royalties from sales.
Acambis began developing the vaccine in 1999, in response to the first identification of the West Nile virus in the US. There is currently no West Nile virus-specific treatment or prophylactic. As a result, the two companies aim to bring this vaccine to the market as rapidly as possible to combat the increasing incidence of West Nile virus infections in North America.
Acambis is currently conducting a US Phase II safety, tolerability and immunogenicity trial with the ChimeriVax West Nile vaccine, in a cohort of adults over 41 years of age, the most at-risk age group. Preliminary data from a previous trial in healthy adults found that 97% of subjects seroconverted 28 days after a single vaccination. Acambis will continue to develop the vaccine to the point of filing a US registration application.
While the majority of West Nile viral infections are mild, up to 15% progress into West Nile encephalitis, which is responsible for the infection-related deaths. So far in 2007, there have been 3,265 cases of West Nile viral infection in the US, with over 90 fatalities.
