Poolbeg Pharma PLC (AIM:POLB, OTCQB:POLBF) said its 'EncOVac' consortium has been awarded €2.3mln in grant funding to progress its oral vaccine platform under the Irish government's Disruptive Technologies Innovation Fund (DTIF).
The consortium, a collaboration between Poolbeg, University College Dublin, Trinity College Dublin and AnaBio Technologies, plans to develop the oral vaccine candidate to a Phase-one ready state in three years.
At that stage, the AIM-listed company said the resulting technology will serve as a platform for additional oral vaccine candidates for a wide range of pathogens, initially targeting bacterial infections.
Earlier this year, Poolbeg licensed AnaBio's microencapsulation and nanoencapsulation technologies for use in the development and commercialisation of oral vaccines.
WATCH: Poolbeg highlights benefits of oral vaccines
The idea is that by being delivering to the gut, oral vaccines can trigger 'mucosal immunity' that results in a protective response in the areas of the body where a pathogen would be inhaled or ingested such as the nose and digestive tracts, while also addressing the gaps in supplying the global community as needle-phobia plays a role in vaccine hesitancy.
Jeremy Skillington, Poolbeg’s chief executive, said the oral vaccine platform also has “the potential to improve the ways vaccines are manufactured, distributed and administered for the future”.
He said the company is continuing to target non-dilutive funding opportunities, of which the DTIF award is its first success.