Tiba Biotech - Disease X

First award under CEPI's innovation programme to improve rapid-response RNA vaccine technology for use against future epidemic and pandemic threats 12 January 2023, OSLO Norway/ CAMBRIDGE, Mass: The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and Tiba Biotech, a preclinical biopharmaceutical company, today announced a new partnership agreement to evaluate Tiba Biotech's next-generation RNA vaccine platform technology. Tiba Biotech's innovative platform could offer substantial advantages over existing RNA vaccines when responding to future epidemic or pandemic diseases. RNA vaccines have saved millions of lives and played a central role in reducing the morbidity and mortality caused by COVID-19, and they will almost certainly be critical to enabling rapid responses to future outbreaks. However, existing RNA vaccines are reactogenic, producing fever or local reactions in many recipients, and attributes of the current technology create barriers to equitable access, due to stringent cold-chain requirements and high production costs relative to other vaccines. Through a Call for Proposals issued in January 2022, CEPI is seeking to advance novel RNA platform technologies based on high-impact innovations that could make RNA vaccines more effective, easier to use, and more accessible in future outbreaks, as well as to expand the application of RNA vaccine platforms to a broader range of virus families. CEPI will provide US$2 million to advance Tiba Biotech's novel RNA nanoparticle delivery platform, RNABL'Ñ¢. This seed funding will support the design, development, and preclinical evaluation of an RNA vaccine candidate against Japanese Encephalitis Virus (JEV) 'Äî a flavivirus that causes human disease, related to dengue, yellow fever and West Nile viruses. The project aims to generate valuable data on the potential for Tiba Biotech's vaccine platform to make the production of RNA vaccines less costly and more efficient; and to develop vaccines which have fewer side effects and are more effective. If successful, the parties have the option to extend the initial project to develop vaccine libraries against known pathogens with pandemic risk, and novel pathogens with epidemic or pandemic potential that could cause the next 'ÄòDisease X'.