Ness Ziona, Israel, July 12th, 2009- NasVax Ltd. (TASE: NSVX), an Israeli company developing a technology for improving vaccines and immunotherapeutics, announced today that it has closed the purchase of 100% of the shares of Protea Vaccine Technologies of Kiryat Shmona Israel. As a result, Protea has become a fully owned subsidiary of NasVax.
In June 2009, Protea announced that it signed a Research and License Option Agreement with GlaxoSmithKline to a set of Protea’s conserved pneumococcal proteins for the development and commercialization of a universal protein-based Streptococcus pneumoniae vaccine.
Protea is developing an innovative next-generation vaccine against diseases caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae, based on widely conserved pneumococcal proteins. Pneumococcal vaccine is one of the two largest market segments in prophylactic vaccines; the 2008 market for pneumococcal vaccines was $2.7B.
About NasVax NasVax (TASE: NSVX) develops improved vaccines and immunotherapeutic products. Besides the Protea pneumococcal vaccine, the company has two distinct technologies: VaxiSomeTM technology, which is an adjuvant system for enhancing the immunogenicity of vaccines and immunotherapeutics, and BBS1 technology, which provides immunotherapeutics for Alzheimer’s disease. The BBS1 technology, for which there are two separate technical approaches, has a novel mechanism of action that makes it distinctive and that could offer certain safety and efficacy advantages over other immunotherapeutic approaches for AD. The two approaches are a monoclonal antibody (MAb) and an active vaccine that would elicit antibodies of similar specificity as the MAb.
About Protea
Protea Vaccine Technologies Ltd has developed a proprietary identification and prioritization platform for the discovery of conserved protein antigens. Using this platform, Protea has defined a group of conserved protein antigens that provide protective immunity against lethal challenge by S. pneumoniae in mouse challenge models. The company is based on the work of Professor Yaffa Mizrachi Nebenzahl of the Pediatrics Infectious Diseases Unit at Soroka University Medical Center and the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, both at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beer-Sheva, and Professor Ron Dagan, MD, Head of the Pediatrics Infectious Diseases Unit at Soroka University Medical Center, at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beer-Sheva. Protea is based in Israel, having been established as Portfolio Company at Meytav Technological Incubator, Tel-Hay Israel.
