$18 Million Award to Develop RNA Chikungunya Vaccine

The Access to Advanced Health Institute (AAHI) today announced that it has received an $18 million award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop a temperature stable, single-dose, RNA chikungunya vaccine candidate.

The NIH award disclosed on August 3, 2023, supports the development, preclinical testing, and human clinical evaluation of a vaccine that meets an increasingly urgent need for a reliable, abundant supply.

Chikungunya is a viral disease transmitted to humans through the bites of mosquitoes infected with the chikungunya virus (CHIKV), says the U.S. CDC.

Chikungunya outbreaks are significant causes of morbidity and mortality in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, for which no vaccine is currently approved.

From 2006–2021, 4,590 chikungunya cases in travelers were reported in the U.S. 

Several vaccine candidates are conducting late-stage clinical trials, such as Valneva SE's VLA1553, a monovalent, single-dose, live-attenuated vaccine candidate.

AAHI's approach to an RNA vaccine against chikungunya differs from the RNA vaccines the U.S. FDA currently approves to prevent other diseases.

“This project will demonstrate the use of RNA vaccine technology to avoid some of the classic manufacturing challenges in the large-scale manufacture of live-attenuated vaccines,” said Emily Voigt, Ph.D., Principal Scientist, AAHI RNA Platform Lead, and Co-Principal Investigator for the award, in a press release.

Unlike other RNA vaccines, this candidate will generate a live "attenuated" virus that could induce strong and long-lasting immune protection against this mosquito-borne disease.

The new 5-year project builds upon work supported by the NIH (R43AI127053) for AAHI's proof-of-concept ground-laying work, which demonstrated that a liquid presentation of this live-attenuated chikungunya RNA vaccine candidate elicited strong immune responses in animals after a single dose, protecting them from mortality and joint swelling after being challenged with the virus (Voigt et al. 2021). 

AAHI is a nonprofit biotech research institute located in Seattle, Washington, that combines the high-quality science of an academic research organization with the product development capabilities of a biotech company to help combat some of the world's deadliest diseases, including infectious diseases