Epimmune Awarded NIH Grant To Continue Work On Vaccine.(Brief Article)

2001 JUN 27 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) --

Epimmune Inc. (Nasdaq: EPMN) announced June 6, 2001, that it has been awarded a U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant to continue its work in collaboration with the U.S. Naval Medical Research Center (NMRC) to develop a vaccine against malaria.

Work accomplished thus far and funded by earlier grants has used Epimmune's Epitope Identification System(TM) and ImmunoSense(SM) technology to identify and select T-cell epitopes expressed by the malaria parasite during the time it replicates in the human liver. The next phase of vaccine development, which is supported by the current grant, is to design a single, multi-epitope vaccine and to optimize its ability to stimulate an immune response against malaria.

Despite many efforts to develop effective anti-malaria drugs and vaccines, today the parasite remains a major health problem. The World Health Organization estimates that there are more than 300 million clinical cases of malaria each year worldwide and that more than one million people die from malaria infection.

Forty percent of the world's population lives where there is a risk of contracting malaria. Children and adults who have not been repeatedly exposed to malaria are at greatest risk of dying from the disease, thus making military personnel and travelers especially vulnerable. ...