Vaccines
Diagnostic assays

Vaccines

NTI utilizes a novel vaccine production system (HydroVax™) that results in superior vaccine formulations for infectious disease as compared to conventional methods. HydroVax™ vaccines:

  1. can replace live vaccines with their inactivated counterparts, thereby greatly reducing the chance for serious adverse events in vaccinated individuals. Moreover, the vaccines will have potential for not requiring cold-chain refrigeration, an important consideration for use in developing countries.
  2. can preserve important immunologic epitopes including neutralization epitopes in a superior manner as compared to conventional methods. This may be a critical advantage in developing inactivated vaccines for such diseases as Leishmaniasis and Malaria.
  3. are amenable to preservative-free formulations.
The properties inherent to our vaccine development platform make them ideal candidates for use in developing countries where an effective cold-chain is difficult to establish. In addition, because HydroVax™ vaccines are inactivated, they may be suitable for immunizing vulnerable populations such as the very young, the elderly and the immunocompromised in whom live virus vaccines would be contraindicated. We are interested in applying the HydroVax™ platform to the development of effective and safe vaccines against emerging infectious diseases — serious diseases that pose a threat to endemic populations as well as the military and international travelers, for diseases of the developing world including Visceral Leishmaniasis and Malaria.

Diagnostic assays

NTI has developed a technology platform termed SABRE (Systematic Analysis of Biologically Relevant Epitopes) that facilitates the development of infectious disease diagnostic assays with optimal specificity and sensitivity.

Proof of principal for the SABRE system has been established for diagnostic applications to detect antibodies against monkeypox. A recent study demonstrated that a SABRE-based ELISA assay was capable of detecting individuals who had been infected with monkeypox in a 2003 outbreak in Wisconsin. This assay demonstrated a specificity and sensitivity level of greater than 90% as compared to a PCR-based assay used by the CDC which demonstrated a 50% sensitivity level with approximately half of expected monkeypox cases yet to be formally confirmed (1). Monkeypox, a Category A bioterrorism agent endemic to the African continent has the potential to be genetically manipulated for increased virulence. In addition to monkeypox, the company has identified candidate peptides that exhibit reactivity with smallpox antibodies. These peptides will be used to format an assay to detect individuals who have been exposed to the smallpox virus.

In addition to the poxvirus assays we are also developing rapid diagnostic assays for other infections diseases such as West Nile Virus and chicken pox.


1. Hammarland, E, Lewis, MW, Carter, SV, Amanna, I, Hansen, SG, Strelow, LI, Wong, SW, Yoshihara, P, Hanifin, JM, Slifka, MK. 2005. Multiple diagnostic techniques identify previously vaccinated individuals with protective immunity against monkeypox. Nat Med Sep;11(9):1005-11.