BIGDNA has been granted a patent for its core bacteriophage vaccine platform in Japan, opening up this market for future vaccines using this technology, including vaccines against influenza and chlamydia.
This follows the announcement last year of the patent granted for BigDNA’s hepatitis B vaccine in Japan.
Says a spokesperson: “The technology allows vaccines to be produced faster and more cost-effectively than traditional methods.
“On the 12-month anniversary of being awarded ‘Best New Life Sciences Company in Scotland’ by Scottish Enterprise at their Life Science Awards.”
BigDNA’s CEO, Dr John March, commented: “This is an important commercial milestone for BigDNA and is great news for Scotland.
“Japan is an important region for us being the third largest market for vaccines and it is forecast that vaccine uptake in Japan is set to increase.”
The spokesperson: “This patent builds upon the links that BigDNA already has with Asia including a collaboration with the China Agricultural University in Beijing to develop a vaccine against chlamydia in pigs.
“The Asia-pacific region is of great importance to BigDNA, being home to developed countries, such as Japan, Korea and Taiwan, and emerging economies, such as India, Malaysia, Thailand and China.
“Many in the latter groups are self-sufficient in funding national vaccination programmes.”
ENDS
Notes for editors:
About BigDNA
In February 2010, Edinburgh-based BigDNA Ltd successfully raised £2m of funding from the Venture Fund arm of Scottish Enterprise and private investors.
This funding enabled the company to develop its platform vaccine delivery technology towards clinical proof of concept.
The technology being developed by Dr. John March and his team at Roslin Biocentre, uses bacterial viruses (bacteriophages) modified so that they are able to deliver a vaccine.
These ‘DNA vaccines’ contain the genetic instructions (DNA) of the disease organism rather than using the organism itself, which conventional vaccines rely upon.
www.bigdna.co.uk
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