Valneva has added to its growing arsenal of vaccines by handing over 10 million euros ($10.7 million) upfront to LimmaTech for the global license to a Shigella candidate that once formed part of a GSK partnership.
There is no vaccine approved for Shigella, the second leading cause of fatal diarrheal disease worldwide. LimmaTech’s asset, dubbed Shigella4V, is a tetravalent bioconjugate vaccine that produced some positive interim data from a phase 1/2 trial in February.
As well as the upfront fee, LimmaTech will be in line for an undisclosed amount of milestone payments and low double-digit royalties on sales should Shigella4V make it to market. The deal means that LimmaTech will be responsible for conducting a pair of phase 2 trials launching later this year: a controlled human infection model and a pediatric study in low- and middle-income countries, which are worst affected by Shigella.
“We are very pleased to partner with LimmaTech to advance a promising program in an area of high unmet medical need,” Valneva CEO Thomas Lingelbach said in the August 1 release.
“The Shigella vaccine candidate enables a potential first-in-class vaccine solution for both [low and middle-income countries] and travelers and, as such, represents a potentially highly synergistic product for Valneva,” Lingelbach continued. “The anticipated development path follows a staggered and risk-mitigated strategy, and hence allows an efficient capital allocation in line with our communicated plan of having a new R&D program in phase 3 by 2027.”
Shigella4V’s story began at LimmaTech, which spun out from GlycoVaxyn after its 2015 acquisition by GSK. When GSK acquired GlycoVaxyn, the candidate was added to the pipeline and LimmaTech was offered a research agreement to develop new bioconjugate antigen-based vaccines in partnership with the U.K.'s non-profit Wellcome Trust. A year ago, GSK handed back the candidate, citing plans to prioritize its own vaccine for the bacteria.
“Having developed the S4V Shigella vaccine candidate from its early discovery phase to the promising clinical data we achieved to date, we are excited to accelerate the program with our partnership with Valneva,” LimmaTech CEO Franz-Werner Haas said in the August 1 release.
Having missed the boat with a COVID-19 vaccine that was only approved in the U.K. in 2022, Valneva has been expecting more success with the rollout of its chikungunya virus vaccine this year. The French biotech also markets shots for cholera and Japanese encephalitis, with candidates for Lyme disease and Zika in the clinic.