New Vaccine For Chlamydia to Use Synthetic Biology
Prokarium Ltd announced new funding from SynbiCITE, the UK’s Innovation and Knowledge Centre for Synthetic Biology. The £498k project is funded at £377k from SynbiCITE and £121k from Prokarium and will enable Prokarium and its collaborator Prof Robin Shattock of Imperial College to complete the pre-clinical development of a Chlamydia vaccine which could enter clinical trials in 2017.
With 92 million new cases of Chlamydia worldwide and over 200,000 new cases in the UK per year, Chlamydia is one of the most common sexually transmitted infections in the world. Symptoms can be serious including pelvic inflammatory disease that can lead to infertility and, in children infected by their mothers, even blindness.
According to Dr Ted Fjällman, CEO of Prokarium, “the new vaccine uses synthetic biology to make the first safe and effective Chlamydia vaccine since the 1960s when conventional methods revealed unacceptable side effects and clinical efforts were abandoned. We have produced a carrier in the form of a re-engineered strain of Salmonella containing the blueprint for the vaccine. It will be taken orally and as it enters through the person’s gut lining it is naturally engulfed by the body’s own immune cells and only then triggered to produce the active vaccine exactly where it is needed and without side effects in other parts of the body. This is a uniquely suitable solution and has already raised interest from big pharmaceutical companies.”
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