The National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, awarded VaxNewMo a $992,959 Phase II SBIR grant for its work in creating a new generation of vaccines.

VaxNewMo was founded in 2016, has three full time employees including CEO Christian Harding and is headquartered at BioGenerator Labs in the Cortex complex of St. Louis. Harding has fueled the business largely through non-dilutive grants – $4.2 million prior to today’s news. Some came from the likes of Arch Grants, but the bulk come from the U.S. Government through Small Business Innovation grants, notably a $3 million Phase 2 grant from the National Institutes of Health. BioGenerator is also an investor.

The money fuels VaxNewMo research into making vaccines against bacteria, rather than the well known ones against viruses. They’re making a two-part vaccine called a ‘conjugate’ vaccine. A conjugate vaccine is a type of vaccine which combines a weak antigen with a strong antigen as a carrier so that the immune system has a stronger response to the weak antigen. They’ve been around for decades, but existing technologies to make them are complicated and expensive.

Christian Harding, VaxNewMo CEO

“We’ve engineered the lab-safe bacterial called E-Coli, to manufacture conjugate vaccines for us,” Harding told the 4thEst8 back in March when we reported his inclusion ito the 2021 cohort of Pipeline Fellows. “We’ve patented that process, and we call it ‘bioconjugation.’ And we’re using our bioconjugation platform to make specific vaccines set against pneumococcal pneumococcus and streptococcus pneumoniae, or GBS or klebsiella. So it’s kind of fun to be both a product and a platform development company at the same time.”

GBS is ‘Group B Streptococcus’ — a bacterial that causes deadly disease in pregnant women and developing babies.

Harding says GBS stands for ‘Group B Streptococcus’ and is a bacteria that causes deadly disease in pregnant women and developing babies.

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Vaccine scientist hopes fellowship will bolster business acumen