AbVacc is developing rationally designed vaccines and engineered antibody therapeutics to prevent and treat emerging infectious diseases. We currently focus on distinct market areas that represent unmet needs of high priority in public health and biodefense. We concentrate on areas with the greatest opportunity for success due to our technological competitive advantage, our scientific expertise, and opportunities for maximizing non-dilutive and private-public funding mechanisms. Our current research portfolio includes various viral and bacterial infectious disease targets such as Ebola virus, Marburgvirus, Nipah virus, Influenza, Multi-drug Resistant Staphylococcus aureus, Clostridium difficile and Bacillus anthracis.

Rational vaccine development requires understanding of the mechanism of protective immunity, potentially harmful immune responses, structural characterization of protective and distractive/decoy epitopes, and using this information to design novel immunogens that focus the immune response to the protective epitopes. At AbVacc, vaccines and antibody development are mutually integrated. We use the information gained on epitopes and structural data to enhance presentation of protective epitopes and blunt responses to non-protective structures.

Vaccine design programs, in turn, inform AbVacc’s antibody discovery. We design Smart Probes to interrogate the immune repertoire of humans and vaccinated macaques for best antibodies, excluding undesirable antibodies in the discovery process and finding the low frequency, high value monoclonal antibodies, i.e. the “needle in hay stack”. In cases where the natural human immune repertoire is too naïve toward a pathogen, like for pathogens of pandemic potential, we use rationally designed immunogens to vaccinate macaques and isolate monoclonal antibodies. AbVacc has a strategic collaboration for its antibody discovery program.

AbVacc has developed two platform technologies named ISTAb and InstaVax for bacterial targets. ISTAb (Infections Site Targeted Antitoxin Antibody) that targets potent anti-toxin monoclonal antibodies to the surrface of bacteria integrating toxin neutralization and opsonophagocytic killing, the two pillars of vaccine efficacy against bacterial pathogens. InstaVax targets immune functions to the surface of invading bacteria utilizing pre-existing immunological memory toward heterologous pathogens and/or weaponizing existing inate immune mechanisms.

AbVacc strongly believes that developing the next generation of therapeutics for the emerging public health challenges requires broad scientific collaboration. AbVacc has a rich history of collaborating with numerous academic institutions and industry including but not limited to Scripps Research Institute, Washington University, Johns Hopkins University, University of Maryland, University of Rochester, UCLA, Eliteimmune Corp., ViroVax, Blue Water Vaccines, and Mapp Biopharmacutical. AbVacc constantly looking for new collaborations.