Maxygen gets $3.4M grant for vaccine discovery technology

California, USA-based biotechnology firm Maxygen has been awarded a two-year, $3.4 million grant from the US Department of Defense to develop technology to advance vaccine R&D. Under the grant, the company will continue development of ParallelaVax technology for rapid generation of vaccine candidates and high-throughput testing in animal models. The work will be done in collaboration with Aldevron.

Maxygen has vaccine programs in the areas of HIV, influenza and encephalitic alphaviruses, which are funded through various external agencies. Its researchers have generated thousands of lead candidates for these vaccine programs using the MolecularBreeding platform. The ParallelaVax technology is being developed in collaboration with Aldevron to enable high-throughput testing of these vaccine candidates in animal models. By creating multiple vaccine leads in parallel, the companies hope to increase the odds of successfully advancing promising vaccines into late-stage clinical trials.

"Combining our MolecularBreeding platform and the ParallelaVax technology may solve some of the fundamental problems with vaccine development," said Russell Howard, chief executive of Maxygen, adding: "we are pleased that the government will continue to fund this important work while Maxygen maintains its focus on the business of developing novel protein therapeutics."