Achieving Thermal Stability for PnuVax's Protein-Conjugate Vaccines****

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PnuVax Incorporated is dedicated to the production of high-quality vaccines and biopharmaceuticals for the promotion of public health worldwide. PnuVax produces several vaccines, including the protein/conjugates Prevnar® used to prevent pneumonia. The ability to produce and formulate this vaccine in a form that can be distributed without the need for refrigeration would provide a strong competitive advantage to PnuVax in this massive market - even small gains in market share would result in very large revenue increases. Improved thermal stability remains one of the largest unsolved problems in vaccinology. Recently, Dr. Filipe's group (Department of Chemical Engineering, McMaster University) has established a new method to thermally stabilize various complex biological agents such as enzymes, nucleic acids, cells and phage They demonstrated that a mixture of pullulan and trehalose results in the formation of water-soluble films (PT films) that can thermally stabilize these complex biological agents when incorporated into the mixture and dried as a film. We will apply this technology to a pneumococcal conjugate vaccine, Prevnar® 13, which will be supplied by PnuVax, our industrial partner for this project and determine the effectiveness of PT films to protect the vaccines agains thermal degradation. ****Being able to thermally stabilize vaccines would greatly decrease the cost of vaccination, which would increase the number of people that can be vaccinated every year and would give a competitive advantage to a Canadian company in this highly competitive global market. An increase in the number of vaccine dosages produced in Ontario will also result in the creation of new jobs, especially those where highly qualified personal are needed. This project has the potential to have a strong local impact in terms of economic growth as well as globally, by making vaccines more accessible to people around the world.**