Cobra Awarded DTI Grant to Develop its Oral Vaccine Delivery Platform

A consortium led by Cobra Biomanufacturing (Keele, UK, www.cobrabio.com) has been awarded a £1.1m grant from the UK Department of Trade and Industry to evaluate the application of Cobra’s proprietary ORT-VAC vaccine technology. The consortium comprises researchers from the University of Cambridge and the Royal Holloway, University of London, under the direction of Professor Nigel Slater and Professor Simon Cutting. Cobra’s proprietary ORT-VAC oral vaccine delivery system exploits the use of innocuous bacteria to deliver vaccines orally. Avoiding the need for needles in vaccination increases the ease of vaccine distribution and administration and simplifies production technology. ORT-VAC is therefore, ideally suited for the development of vaccines for developing countries and applications in the animal health sector. The funds awarded will be largely used to support preclinical experimentation in Cobra’s collaborators’ laboratories.