Healthy nerve cell. Image courtesy NIH.
Seven partners have teamed up with €2.4 million in EU backing to develop a vaccine against Alzheimer’s disease. The project, MimoVax, will be coordinated by the Austrian company Affiris GmbH, and aims to elicit an immune reaction to the beta amyloid plaques that are at the heart of the neurodegenerative disease. The project is part of the sixth EU Framework Programme.
Affiris believes it can get around the problem of prompting an immune reaction against both normal and degenerated forms of beta amyloid protein that has frustrated previous attempts to develop an Alzheimer’s vaccine by targeting the protein. The Vienna-based company aims to do this with its Mimitope platform technology, which enables it to target peptides that occur in the pathological form of beta amyloid only, thus sparing the natural form. This principle has been validated in another vaccine developed by Affiris.
The MimoVax project will involve the pre-clinical and the first clinical phases of development for the new vaccine over the next three years. Affiris will coordinate partners from Austria, Germany and Spain, including three companies, two university institutes and a clinic. A total of 20 scientists will be involved.
New diagnostics will are be developed also, to enable the vaccine's efficacy to be determined.
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