Hong Kong start-up Pacific GeneTech joins global search for African swine fever vaccine
- The disease, for which no effective vaccine has made it to market, has resulted in hundreds of millions of pigs either dying or being culled globally
- Pacific GeneTech plans to conduct its ‘proof-of-concept’ clinical trial on 120 pigs in North America, at a cost of up to US$500,000
Hong Kong, a financial centre less known for its biotechnology industry and even less for its expertise in animal health technologies, is home to one company with global ambitions in the animal vaccine business.
Pacific GeneTech this month partnered with Rhode Island, US-based EpiVax to develop vaccines for African swine fever (ASF), said CEO Tim Collard, who started his pharmaceutical career in the 1970s at Connaught Laboratories, which supplied vaccines to Hong Kong.
“EpiVax has developed computational and genetic tools to develop vaccines for humans and animals, to facilitate selection of the best components from circulating viruses for making vaccines,” he said in an interview.
“Many vaccines being pursued are unlikely to be effective because ASF is a very tricky virus with multiple strains, which has caused big problems in Asia, Russia and parts of Europe … it is a matter of time before it spreads to the United States.”
The EpiVax approach is based on a strategy to provide immunity through antibodies that neutralise the virus, and also induce immune cells to kill it, he noted. Antibodies can no longer reach the virus once it enters the cell.