NIH Awards $1.8 Million in Small Business Grants for Vaccines

(U.S. Army Corps of Engineers)

Altravax Inc. in Fargo, North Dakota received two grants from National Institutes of Health (NIH) for research on vaccines for HIV-1. A third NIH grant supports the company’s work on vaccines for an influenza virus. All three grants, valued at $1.8 million, are awarded under NIH’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program.

Two of the SBIR grants totaling $1.2 million were awarded by NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for research on antibody-inducing vaccines for HIV-1. Altravax says it will use its MolecularBreeding technology to create vaccines that provide protection against the various strains of HIV-1. The existence of a large number of virus strains and the changing nature of the virus is one of the major challenges facing the development of vaccines for HIV/AIDS.

Altravax also received a third NIH SBIR grant for $600,000 to support its research on vaccines that provide protection against the two influenza B virus strains that co-circulate each flu season.