GeoVax Receives Notice of Allowance for Malaria Vaccine Patent

GeoVax Labs, Inc. recently announced the US Patent and Trademark Office has issued a Notice of Allowance for Patent Application No. 17/726,254 titled Compositions and Methods for Generating an Immune Response to Treat or Prevent Malaria.”

The allowed claims cover compositions comprising GeoVax’s modified vaccinia Ankara (MVA) vector expressing Plasmodium antigens and methods of inducing an immune response to malaria utilizing the compositions. The compositions and methods covered in the allowed claims are useful both prophylactically and therapeutically and may be used to prevent and/or treat malaria.

According to data from the World Health Organization, globally, malaria causes 227 million infections and 619,000 deaths annually. Despite decades of vaccine research, vaccine candidates have failed to induce substantial protection. Most of these vaccines are based on individual proteins that induce immune responses targeting only one stage of the malaria parasite’s life cycle. GeoVax’s MVA-VLP malaria vaccine candidates incorporate antigens derived from multiple stages of the parasite’s life cycle and are designed to induce an immune response with durable functional antibodies and CD4+ and CD8+ T cell responses, all hallmarks of an ideal vaccine-induced immune response.

David Dodd, GeoVax President and CEO, said “We remain strongly committed to advancing innovation towards improving public health worldwide and this patent allowance reflects a potentially significant advancement relative to malaria prevention. Our development priorities continue to be our next-generation COVID-19 vaccine, currently in Phase 2 clinical trials, and our cancer immunotherapy program, with Gedeptin as our lead product in a Phase 1/2 clinical trial for Advanced Head and Neck cancer. However, developing vaccines against global public health threats, such as malaria, is also part of our longer-term commitment focus. This patent allowance adds to our growing portfolio of wholly owned, co-owned, and in-licensed intellectual property, now standing at over 115 granted or pending patent applications spread over 24 patent families.”

GeoVax’s GV-MVA-VLP vaccine platform utilizes modified vaccinia Ankara (MVA), a large virus capable of carrying several vaccine antigens, that expresses proteins that assemble into virus-like particles (VLP) immunogens in the person receiving the vaccine. The production of VLPs in the person being vaccinated can mimic the virus production that occurs in a natural infection, stimulating both the humoral and cellular arms of the immune system to recognize, prevent, and control the target infection. The MVA-VLP derived vaccines can elicit durable immune responses in the host similar to a live-attenuated virus, while providing the safety characteristics of a replication-defective vector.

GeoVax Labs, Inc. is a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing novel therapies and vaccines for solid tumor cancers and many of the world’s most threatening infectious diseases. The company’s lead program in oncology is a novel oncolytic solid tumor gene-directed therapy, Gedeptin, presently in a multicenter Phase 1/2 clinical trial for advanced head and neck cancers. GeoVax’s lead infectious disease candidate is GEO-CM04S1, a next-generation COVID-19 vaccine targeting high-risk immunocompromised patient populations. Currently in three Phase 2 clinical trials, GEO-CM04S1 is being evaluated as a primary vaccine for immunocompromised patients such as those suffering from hematologic cancers and other patient populations for whom the current authorized COVID-19 vaccines are insufficient, and as a booster vaccine in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). In addition, GEO-CM04S1 is in a Phase 2 clinical trial evaluating the vaccine as a more robust, durable COVID-19 booster among healthy patients who previously received the mRNA vaccines. GeoVax has a leadership team who have driven significant value creation across multiple life science companies over the past several decades. For more information, visit www.geovax.com.