Collaboration set to eliminate cold-chain distribution

Lipoxen - a spin-out from the School of Pharmacy at the University of London - has entered into an agreement with Cambridge Biostability, the University of Cambridge and the UK’s Health Protection Agency to develop vaccine technology, which will achieve greater efficacy and eliminate the need for “cold-chain” distribution.

Traditional vaccines have to be distributed at low temperatures, Lipoxen hope to change that.

The parties will be working to create vaccine materials that are more stable, have a long shelf-life, require fewer doses in order to be effective and overcome the cold-chain storage and distribution problem associated with traditional vaccines. The need to distribute vaccines at low temperatures from manufacturing plant to patient (the “cold chain”) is one of the major reasons that very few people in the developing world are able to receive the modern vaccines they desperately need.

M. Scott Maguire, CEO of Lipoxen, said: “We are excited to be entering into this unique first-class partnership and pooling our resources and expertise with Cambridge Biostability, Cambridge University and the HPA. There is little doubt that significant improvements in public health and life expectancy could be achieved if modern vaccines could be delivered to a much greater proportion of the developing world's population.”

The vaccine formulations developed as a result of this project are expected to have several advantages over conventional vaccines. These include the ability to be stockpiled for long periods and to be more efficacious than existing vaccines. This may allow lower doses to be administered, allowing much smaller supplies of modern vaccines (for example, of pandemic vaccine) to be used to protect much greater numbers of people at risk in the event of a pandemic.