Sanofi Pasteur has entered into a four-year strategic partnership with the US Naval Medical Research Center (NMRC) to develop a diarrhoea vaccine.
The core enterotoxigenic escherichia coli (ETEC) adhesin vaccine technology developed by NMRC had been licensed to Sanofi with another technology that packages the adhesin with a toxoid vaccine component co-developed by NMRC and the University of Colorado in Denver.
Sanofi Pasteur president and CEO Wayne Pisano said that the company would expedite the development of this vaccine for eventual licence and sale worldwide.
“This multiyear project will provide a solid basis for launching clinical development,” he said
“We believe that this vaccine has the potential to curtail the number and severity of food-borne illnesses due to ETEC, and it may also decrease the risk of post-infectious irritable bowel syndrome, which afflicts one in ten who experience travellers’ diarrhoea.”
Following the successful four-year pre-clinical research, full-scale clinical development of a multivalent adhesin-based ETEC vaccine will be initiated.
