Isis Innovation licenses meningococcus vaccine to Novartis

Licensing agreement

Isis Innovation, the University of Oxford’s technology transfer company, has licensed patents based on the work of Oxford’s Professor Richard Moxon and that of Canada’s National Research Council Institute for Biological Science to Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics.

The patents cover a novel vaccine candidate against meningococcus (Neisseria meningitidis), the bacterium that causes meningitis. The vaccine, which is currently in the preclinical stage, is designed to combat all meningococcal strains, including serogroup B, for which there is currently no vaccine available.

Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics has received a worldwide exclusive licence to the Isis-owned patent on the vaccine, which targets lipopolyaccharide (LPS), a macromolecule present in large amounts on the surface of meningococci during disease. Preclinical proof-of-concept studies have illustrated that the lipopolyaccharide molecules are recognised by the immune system and have potential as vaccine candidates.

Richard Moxon, Professor of Paediatrics at Oxford, said: “There are many thousands of cases of meningococcal disease each year resulting in thousands of deaths. Untreated, meningococcal sepsis and meningitis are usually fatal.

“The meningococcus bacteria is very common – on average, about 10 per cent of people are likely to be carriers. Fortunately, only a very small fraction of those carrying this bacterium go on to develop disease, but when this does happen, it is life threatening.

“This LPS-based approach also has the potential to be a platform technology, spawning a whole new generation of vaccines, able to combat Gram-negative bacteria at a time when antibiotic resistance and other factors are on the rise, making the requirements for new approaches to combat infectious diseases more important than ever.”