The National Institutes of Health awarded VaxNewMo a Phase I STTR grant for the development of a vaccine against Klebsiella — a bacterial infection that is often drug resistant, and deadly to otherwise compromised patients in hospitals.
Christian Harding, VaxNewMo CEO
“This new award allows… first and foremost, expansion our team,” CEO Christian Harding told the 4thEst8, saying he is actively bringing on a fourth scientist for the duration of this two year grant. “Second, we’re really excited about tackling and developing a new vaccine to prevent … drug resistant Klebsiella infections. We believe the next pandemic is not a viral pathogen, but actually the phenomenon of antimicrobial resistance.”
Big words, but he backs it up with a World Health Organization study and projection that by 2050 drug resistant bacterial infections will take top spot in the list of most deadly conditions.
“This grant we’re really focused on Klebsiella, a bacteria you commonly get in the hospital,” Harding said. “VaxNewMo has a platform technology… we call bioconjugation. It is versatile and allows us to generate conjugate vaccines, which are vaccines to prevent bacterial infections in a very simplified, one-step, process.”
Other vaccines in the VaxNewMo pipeline address Pneumococcus and Streptococcus infections.
VaxNewMo, founded by Harding in Aug. 2016, raised more than $2.6M in SBIR/STTR grants (including today’s) from the National Institutes of Health, plus $50,000 from Arch Grants in 2017. The three person startup is headquartered in BioGenerator Labs in St. Louis. The company received $3M from BioGenerator in Feb, 2020… characterized as a “grant round”, as well as an undisclosed seed round from the BioSTL investment arm in Jan. 2019.
Links:
On the 4thEst8:
3-scientist vaccine startup lands $993K
Harding joins Pipeline Fellows
