With funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, in collaboration with the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), Avatar is a biotechnology company applying proprietary technologies to develop conformationally locked, improved sub-unit vaccine immunogens. The companys technologies are designed to enhance the performance of these products by stabilizing their conformations, which then better represent the 3-D structure of these proteins on the surface of the pathogen, and therefore give rise to more protective antibody responses. Avatar has applied its di-tyrosine conformational locking approach to render feasible the production of vaccines that protect against key viral diseases that represent both significant unmet medical needs and blockbuster commercial opportunities. These are a universal Influenza vaccine, and a vaccine against Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV), a common pediatric infection. Both immunogens have been successfully conformationally stabilized with DT crosslinks and studies are underway in collaboration with opinion leaders at the NIH and academia to test them; expected to provide animal proof of principle.
