Aeras, the University of Oxford, and Okairos, a biopharmaceutical company specializing in T-cell vaccines announced a US$2.9 million grant to Aeras “in support of a collaboration among the three parties to support the development of vaccines against tuberculosis, HIV and malaria.” The grant, provided by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, “allows the three groups to work together to develop scalable methods to enable large-scale production of multiple novel chimpanzee adenovirus vector constructs.” Novel constructs to be pursued include Okairos’ proprietary technology platform that “uses potent chimpanzee adenovirus vectors to stimulate robust T-cell and antibody responses against selected antigens.”

Full media release: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20130507005346/en/Aeras-Oxford-University-Okairos-TB-HIV-Malaria