Asphalion is actively participating in Horizon 2020 programme as a member of many projects consortium under this European Comission’s initiative that brings research ideas into the market.
Asphalion participations in H2020 programme were explained in detail by our General Manager in Regulatory Affairs, Lidia Cánovas, in the press conference and in a radio interview at BioSpain 2016 in Bilbao. To listen it you can click here!
Our company is involved in the development of innovative drugs such as iHIVARNA, a therapeutic vaccine against HIV.
The European iHIVARNA Project, funded by the European Commission under FP7, is the first of the innovative drug developments in which Asphalion participates as a regulatory partner within the project consortium.
In addition, Asphalion also collaborates in the projects Horizon2020 Myocure, an innovative gene therapy platform to cure rare hereditary muscular disorders and Elastislet, an innovative biomaterial-based nanoencapsulation strategy that mimics elastin to deal with diabetes.
IHIVARNA aims to successfully immunize HIV-positive patients treated with antiretrovirals and aims to bring the innovative vaccine candidate therapeutic mRNA against HIV to clinical stages. Currently, a first phase I clinical study has been carried out and the next phase II study is being prepared.
The iHIVARNA strategy proposes the use of a therapeutic vaccine based on mRNA that encodes HIV antigens as a novel and promising HIV immunotherapy as an alternative therapy for patients already treated with antiretroviral therapy.
With more than 30 million people infected with HIV worldwide, most of them in developing countries, research into treatment alternatives is of utmost importance. Current antiretroviral therapies are effective in preventing the clinical progression of disease and death but fail to eradicate the infection. Therapeutic vaccination could restore HIV-specific T cell responses in these patients and help them control viral replication and thus disease progression, with the ultimate goal of discontinuing antiretroviral therapy.
The candidate is based on an innovative approach that uses naked mRNA that until now had only been applied in cancer research. HIV-Trimix-mRNA has two parts: HIV that has been rationally designed by IrsiCaixa based on data from large international cohorts; And Trimix designed by the Free University of Brussels (Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB)) to activate and direct dendritic cells to improve the presentation of HIV antigens. The combination of mRNA is a very innovative approach to a therapeutic vaccine and is expected to improve the results of other, more traditional, proven strategies.
The four-year project is in the third year of implementation and brings together the experience required for the development of this vaccine from various European groups (Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands); In the treatment and follow-up of immuno-virological patients with HIV or in the rational development of immunogens or in the manufacture of mRNA.
Information about the Project:
The iHIVARNA project (Full title: Therapeutic TriMIx / mRNA based Vaccine in Chronic HIV-1 Infected Patients on Antiretroviral Therapy) is funded with approximately 6 million Euros by the European Commission within the 7th Framework Program, coordinated by Dr. Felipe García del IDIBAPS (Institut d’Investigacions Biomèdiques August Pi i Sunyer) and implemented by 8 leading research institutions and SMEs in the sector.
IHIVARNA officially began on December 1, 2013, with a duration of 48 months.
List of participating institutions:
- Consortium Institut d’Investigacions Biomèdiques August Pi i Sunyer (IDIBAPS)
- Instituut voor Tropische Geneeskunde (ITM)
- Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB)
- eTheRNA NV (eTheRNA)
- Erasmus Universitair Medisch Centrum Rotterdam (EMC)
- IrsiCaixa AIDS Research Institute
- Synapse Research Management Partners S.L. (SYNAPSE)
- Asphalion, S.L. (ASPHALION)
