Regeneron Joins Human Vaccines Project

The Human Vaccines Project, a private-public partnership geared toward discovery and development of infectious disease and cancer immunotherapies, now counts Regeneron Pharmaceuticals among its collaborators. The alliance, made up of several leading pharmaceutical and biotech companies, non-profit and governmental health organizations, and academic institutions, will benefit from Regeneron’s scientific guidance as well as financial support, though a specific amount has not been disclosed.

The Human Vaccines Project currently comprises a seven- to 10-year initiative to sequence adaptive immune system components across diverse populations, intended to lead to highly targeted vaccines and therapies, as well as a “Rules of Immunogenicity” program involving several small clinical trials run to investigate the immune system to identify and solve problems that hamper vaccine and immunotherapy development.

Regeneron also brings to these initiatives its VelociSuite© technologies for predictive testing of vaccines and immunotherapies in fully humanized in vivo models, which may be used to identify more-precise and efficient therapeutics. The company has commercialized medicines for high cholesterol, eye disease, and a rare genetic inflammatory condition called cryopyrin-associated periodic syndromes. Their development pipeline includes candidates for oncology, rheumatoid arthritis, asthma, atopic dermatitis, pain, and infectious diseases.

Human Vaccines Project founder and CSO Wayne C. Koff, Ph.D., said in a statement released today that, “Given recent technological developments in genomics, bioinformatics and systems biology, we are confident that the time is right to consolidate our partners’ knowledge in an innovative global consortium whose goal is to advance a new generation of vaccines and immunotherapies that could prevent or control major global diseases.”