GENEART Awarded two US Patents for Successfully Tested HIV Vaccines

The GENEART AG announces the award of the patents US 7,332,588 and US 7,323,557 titled "Genome of the HIV-1 inter-subtype (C/B') and use thereof" by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The above-mentioned patents protect the use of specific custom-designed HIV gene sequences for the development as therapeutics or vaccines.

Recently, the now patent-protected gene sequences have been tested as HIV vaccine candidates on 40 test persons by the EuroVacc Foundation in a phase I clinical trial. The trial has turned out to be successful. The results of this study have been published in "The Journal of Experimental Medicine" (Vol. 205, 63-77).

In the trial, the prophylactic vaccination proved to be safe and well tolerated, and it triggered a strong and lasting immune response in 90 % of the vaccinated test persons in London and Lausanne. As the licensor, GENEART provided the patented gene sequences (structural design) for the tested vaccines.

The synthetic genes were custom-designed by the scientists at GENEART and the University of Regensburg. These genes serve as the basis for the vaccine candidates, which are used in the so-called "prime boost" procedure as naked DNA (DNA-HIV-C), and with a genetically modified small pox vaccine (NYVAC-HIV-C) as a carrier system.

The further clinical I/II studies with 120 test persons in Lausanne, London, Paris and Regensburg started already in the beginning of 2008, under the patronage of the European research cluster EuroVacc.