MidEast

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Israeli Company Receives More Patents for its Universal Flu Vaccine

BiondVax, an Israeli vaccine developer, announced Wednesday that both Japan and the European Union had granted it patents for its universal flu vaccine.

David Shamah of The Times of Israel reports:

A universal flu vaccine developed by Israel’s BiondVax has been granted patents by both the European Union and Japan, the company announced Wednesday. …

With the newest patent approvals, the company said that it can now enter into wide-scale development programs with pharmaceutical companies and governments that will license its technology to develop a one-stop-shop vaccine for influenza.

The advantage to a universal flu vaccine is that it can be effective in fighting each year’s most prevalent flu strain, which is not known in advance. Shamah explains how the BiondVax vaccine, which was created from Multimeric-001 (M-001) technology licensed from the Weizmann Institute, addresses this problem:

Based on the Weizmann research, BiondVax was able to isolate nine linked sections from three proteins found in nearly all strains of flu discovered over the past 75 years. M-001, according to BiondVax, could be administered as a vaccine “primer” at any time of the year, helping to build basic resistance to the flu. And if an epidemic does appear imminent, the basic formula could be quickly adjusted to deal with the particular strain involved, with vaccinations to battle the season’s trending flu prepared and distributed to doctors, hospitals, and clinics long before the disease starts to spread.

Ironically, Shamah notes, that one country where M-001 has not received a patent is Israel. Nonetheless, it has still “received patents in the United States, Hong Kong, Australia, China, Russia and Mexico, and the two new approvals extend its reach dramatically.”

[Photo: Biondvax Universal Flu Vaccine / YouTube ]