NorthX has signed a partnership agreement to upscale and manufacture Abera Biosciences’ vaccine candidate against pneumococcus, Ab-01.12.  

Abera is a vaccine and platform development company, which was founded in 2012 as a spinout from Swedish production firm Xbrane Bioscience. Its lead vaccine candidate Ab-01.12 is administered as a nasal spray and aims to treat pneumococcus using technology designed to protect against all variants of the bacterium.

Abera is preparing the vaccine candidate for clinical trials in humans and has teamed up with NorthX to accelerate the development of Ab-01.12.

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“Together with NorthX, we have prepared a plan for accelerated development of Ab-01.12 where we expect to be able to initiate toxicological studies during Q4 2022 and hope to be able to submit our dossier and application to begin clinical studies Phase I for Ab-01.12 during the first half of the year 2023,” Maria Alriksson, CEO of Abera Bioscience said.

“NorthX’s innovation hub for vaccine development is an exciting initiative where we as a vaccine platform company already see several opportunities for different collaborations.”

Pneumococcus is a bacterium that in mild form can cause sinusitis, and ear infections but when severe, it can lead to pneumonia, sepsis, and meningitis. It accounts for 1.5 – 2 million deaths per year and mainly affects children and the elderly. There are just under one hundred variants of the bacterium and current vaccines only offer protection against twenty of these.

According to Abera, its vaccine delivery platform entitled BERA is based on outer membrane vesicles (OMVs). OMVs are derived from genetically optimized Gram-negative bacteria and the firm says its “plug-and-play-like” technology enables high density decoration of the OMVs with recombinant antigens as well as other functional proteins to advance vaccines and immunotherapeutics.

NorthX took over Charles River’s manufacturing plant in Matfors, Sweden, through a $52 million acquisition in October 2021 and the firm claims its hub offers helps its partners to achieve long-term drug development goals.