Maxygen receives $3.4 million grant from US Department of Defense

Aug 28, 2008 (Datamonitor via COMTEX) -- MAXY | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- Maxygen, a biotechnology company focused on the development of improved protein drugs, has received a two-year, $3.4 million grant from the US Department of Defense to develop technology to advance vaccine research and development.

Under the grant, Maxygen will continue development of ParallelaVax technology for rapid generation of vaccine candidates and high-throughput testing in animal models. The work will be done in collaboration with Aldevron.

The grant also allows Maxygen to continue work done under a previous contract with the Department of Defense and partner with the Joint Program Executive Office for Chemical and Biological Defense, Chemical Biological Medical Systems Joint Project Management Office in developing vaccine systems used to protect military personnel from biological agents.

The ParallelaVax technology is being developed in collaboration with Aldevron to enable high-throughput testing of these vaccine candidates in animal models. By creating multiple vaccine leads in parallel, the companies hope to increase the odds of successfully advancing promising vaccines into late stage clinical trials.

The companies are also working on a separate project to develop an analogous platform for human clinical trials, called Paraclin, which will enable rapid screening of vaccine candidates in humans. The goal of this work is to lower the time, cost, and risk of vaccine clinical trials.

Russell Howard, CEO of Maxygen, said: "Combining our MolecularBreeding platform and the ParallelaVax technology may solve some of the fundamental problems with vaccine development. We are pleased that the government will continue to fund this important work while Maxygen maintains its focus on the business of developing novel protein therapeutics."

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