Swiss firm LimmaTech Biologics AG has announced a license and collaboration agreement with Griffith University in Queensland, Australia, to develop vaccines that prevent diseases with significant unmet medical need caused by emerging antibiotic resistant strains.

The company has obtained an exclusive license to a suite of vaccine technologies developed by Professors Michael Jennings and Kate Seib at Griffith University’s Institute for Glycomics. LimmaTech will initially use the technologies as well as its in-house expertise to develop the world’s first gonorrhoea vaccine.

Gonorrhoea is the second most common sexually transmitted infection globally, with more than 105 million people infected each year. If left untreated, gonorrhoea can have severe implications including infertility in women and blindness in newborn babies. Infection also dramatically increases the risk of contracting and transmitting the human immunodeficiency virus, HIV. Alarmingly, it is predicted that in just a few years most infections will no longer be treatable with the current standard of care antibiotics due to emerging antibiotic resistance. There is currently no vaccine available to treat this common infection.

“We have discovered gonococcal vaccine antigens that show great promise in a laboratory setting. By combining our innovative technologies we hope to translate our findings into an effective vaccine that can minimize the risk of infection,’’ said Michael Jennings, Ph.D, Professor, Institute for Glycomics at Griffith University.

Kate Seib, Ph.D., Professor, Institute for Glycomics at Griffith University added: “The bacterium causing gonorrhea has developed resistance to almost all the antibiotics used to treat the disease. The absence of a vaccine and the emergence of antibiotic-resistant gonococcal strains poses an urgent public health threat."