Iomai wins $128 million HHS contract for patch-based flu vaccine
Innoculation method could be mailed to patients; adjuvant stimulants allow the company to stretch out the nation’s vaccine supply; company looks for distribution partners, but many already see MedImmune as the most promising candidate
When one thinks of the administration of the flu vaccine, one typically imagines lines at senior centers and hysterical calls to the doctor demanding to be innoculated. Often these pleas are rejected due to ongoing shortages of the vaccine, but things may be changing thanks to Gaithersburg, Virginia-based Iomai. The company has received a $128 million contract from the Department of Health and Human Services to develop a method that not only increases access to flu vaccine, it also requires less of it per dose. The idea is to mail recipients a small patch containing the vaccine as well as stimulants called adjuvants that increase its potency. After the patient has worn the patch for a few hours, he simply disposes of it into the trash can. “It is a very interesting technology,” said Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “If it works.”
Investors take note: According Iomai CEO Stanley Erck, the company is seeking a partnership with a major drug company for the vaccine — a good idea because Iomai is too small to handle the distribution and marketting of a seasonal product. One possibility is that the company will partner with Gaithersburg neighbor MedImmune, which readers will recall manufactures the FluMist nasal-spray vaccine. As it happens, the venture capital group behind MedImmune is a 5 percent shareholder in Iomai, and the two companies have other close ties on each other’s boards. According to Erck, MedImmune is “one of the vaccine players that could possibly have an interest in this program.” Others might include Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline, and Sanofi Pasteur.
The contract also reaffirmed the faith of investors, who have been nervous since the company went public last year. “This caught on to investors’ radars,” said analyst Angela Larson of Susquehanna Financial Group. The contract “is a third-party validation to their approach to vaccination,” she said.
-read more in Michael S. Rosenwald’s Washington Post report
