Geneart awarded €300K grant for EU HIV vaccine project

Genart AG, a specialist in the production of synthetic genes and synthetic biology, was awarded a €300,000 grant for its role in the EU €12 million project, “New HIV Vaccines Inducing Broadly Reactive Neutralising Antibodies.”

The project, coordinated by Sanofi Pasteur aims to development of a broad spectrum vaccine against HIV. It will involve15 research groups.

Geneart’s role will be to develop and synthesise gene constructs for the efficient production of the vaccine candidates. In an iterative process, the gene sequences will be optimised for highest yields in the selected bacterial strain. At the same time, the company will systematically analyse the influence of different sequence motives, or specific successions of bases in a given gene, on production rates in the laboratory.

Ralf Wagner, CEO of Geneart said the results would also enhance the company’s GeneOptimizer technology platform. “We continue to perform production and gene expression studies in the laboratory to constantly check and improve our software algorithm. In addition, we strive to identify new gene sequence motives to further increase protein production rates.”

The overall aim of the HIV project is to induce broadly neutralising antibodies by using derivatives of the HIV envelope protein. It is hoped that when administered as a vaccine this will trigger the creation of antibodies able to block the virus in blood and in mucosa, thus preventing the initial infection step. As this targets a common mechanism of HIV entry, it is expected that the vaccine could be effective against a broad range of HIV-1 strains.