Munich vaccinates ImevaX

Munich Institute of Technology’s (Tum) biotech spin-out biotech ImevaX has received further support from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. The ministry is now funding the company with a Go Bio Phase II grant worth €5.9m ($7.5m).

The biotech is based on research by Markus Gerhard and Dirk Bursch at the university’s Institute of Medical Microbiology, Immunology and Hygiene. It is commercialising vaccines for chronic and nosocomial infectious diseases.

Lead drug candidate IMX is a vaccine against a bacterial infection of the stomach, helicopacter pylori, which causes ulcers, gastritis and stomach cancer – the latter of which causes more than 500,000 deaths worldwide each year. The problem is aggravated by the growing antibiotic resistance of the bacteria.

The lead product, ImeScreen, includes a range of assays which are able to analyse certain properties of bacterial proteins and extrapolate potential vaccine candidates.

Dirk Busch, director of the Institute of Medical Microbiology, Immunology and Hygiene at Tum, said: “Conventional antibiotics quickly lead to the development of resistance and are not specific for a particular pathogen. This presents us with ever increasing problems in the therapy of infectious diseases. ImevaX has selected a different approach, which is characterized by high pathogen specificity and low development of resistance. This is a very promising method of addressing these issues.”