Crucell and Aeras Announce Progress in TB Vaccine Program
Crucell N.V. and Aeras Global TB Vaccine Foundation announced the initiation of a series of clinical studies for their AdVac®-based TB vaccine. The studies, which follow promising results for the vaccine obtained in animal studies, are scheduled to start in Europe, the US and Africa in the second quarter of 2006.
The announcement was made by Crucell's Chief Scientific Officer, Dr Jaap Goudsmit, at a Congress held in Berlin called "New Approaches to Vaccine Development - From the Bench to the Field". Dr Goudsmit's lecture, entitled "Children's Vaccines Against HIV, Malaria and TB: the Advantage of Ad35 Vectors", highlighted the application of adenovirus serotype-35 (Ad35) vectors for mass vaccination against poverty-related diseases such as TB.
Crucell has developed technology capable of producing large numbers of vaccine doses at low cost by using a combination of Ad35 and the Company's PER.C6® production technology. The second-generation Ad35 vector applied in the TB program is extremely suitable for vaccine production on PER.C6® cell culture at scale. Such highly productive systems are particularly important in the case of poverty-related diseases such as HIV, malaria and TB, when 10-100 millions of doses need to be manufactured while keeping costs relatively low.
Other news from the department science
