Codagenix Inc., a clinical-stage biotechnology company, today announced a collaboration agreement with PATH funded by a grant from the Gates Foundation to apply its proprietary synthetic biology technology to fortify novel oral poliovirus vaccine (nOPV) strains against recombination with other enteroviruses, thereby further reducing the risk of emergence of potentially neurovirulent vaccine-derived polioviruses. For this initial phase, Codagenix will synthetically modify the genomes of nOPV strains to produce new nOPV-maxSD strains with intent to establish in vitro proof of concept for their reduced rate of recombination.
Surveillance during the global rollout of >1.8 billion doses of nOPV2 has continued to support the enhanced genetic stability that was demonstrated in preclinical and clinical testing of this innovative vaccine, compared to traditional Sabin oral polio vaccine type 2 (OPV2) use. This has importantly included an estimated ~80% reduction in emergence of new type 2 variant polio virus strains. However, it has also revealed that nOPV2 does retain a residual capacity to recombine with close genetic relatives, including Sabin strains and C-cluster non-polio enteroviruses (NPEV-C).
Codagenix looks forward to working in partnership with PATH and the Gates Foundation to further reduce this potential risk for recombination and VDPV emergence, by driving even greater genetic stability of nOPV2 and of nOPV type 1 and type 3 candidates that are currently in development.
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