Co-Investigators Drs. Thomas Geisbert & Robert Cross were awarded funding worth up to $87.4M from the Medical CBRN Defense Consortium of the U.S. Department of Defense for the project titled “Development of vaccines to prevent Crimean Congo hemorrhagic fever virus or Henipavirus infections in humans.”
In collaboration with Dr. Jesse Erasmus, PI of HDT Bio Corp., Drs. Geisbert & Cross will lead a team of researchers to develop mRNA vaccines against Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus and Nipah virus. The base 5-year contract of $59M will support vaccine development through Phase 1 trials and includes another $28.4M in additional milestones towards FDA IND approval.
Leveraging HDT Bio’s self-amplifying RNA (saRNA) vaccine platform and proprietary LION delivery system, UTMB will lead the project to develop assays and select lead vaccine candidates for NiV, while collaborators at Rocky Mountain Labs, Laboratory of Virology (PI: Dr. Feldmann), a National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease laboratory, focus on selection of CCHFV saRNA vaccine candidates.