Development of a Therapeutic mRNA HPV Vaccine using Phion's Delivery Technology

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Infection with the human papilloma virus (HPV) leads to genital warts, pre-cancerous lesions and cancer. HPV is the most common sexually transmitted disease, yet all current vaccines are designed to prevent the disease and there is no effective treatment for those currently infected. Given that worldwide there are 200 million currently infected with HPV there is a clear need to create a vaccine that can treat the disease and clear the infection and that is the main focus of this project.To make a vaccine therapeutic a particular type of immunity is required known as a CD8+ response. Phion Therapeutics have created a vaccine that produces a CD8+ response. We get this response because we can deliver the vaccine into the correct cells using a cell penetrating peptide as a delivery vehicle. We are the only company to have this peptide to deliver the vaccine. The vaccine itself is a genetic cargo (mRNA) designed to code for the antigens in a particular disease.To date, we have produced and published data proving our prototype vaccine can eradicate target infected cells in vivo. This project is designed to build a vaccine specifically for HPV using genetic mRNA antigens termed E6/E7. We aim to clear HPV infections from small and large animal models of disease. We will also gather key information on the best dose and when to give the vaccine to get the best therapeutic response. The vision is to take our technology along the pipeline so that by the end we are ready to commence large-scale toxicology studies. The data pack achieved from this project is essential for us to raise further funds for these toxicology studies and this is also critical for the success of Phion's internal pipeline of projects. This is a highly innovative project as the first of its kind peptide/mRNA vaccine that can be used to treat HPV. Additionally, key information from this project can be applied to build therapeutic vaccines for viral infections such as Herpes Simplex Virus (HSV) and Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). The development of the technology in this project could be the catalyst for a new generation of vaccines designed to clear viral infections on a global scale.