$5.8 Million Award Advances Innovative Dengue Vaccine Candidate

While two approved dengue vaccines are in use today, an innovative vaccine candidate was awarded $5.88 million to support activities to advance it into the clinic.

Codagenix Inc. announced on October 24, 2023, that the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) awarded the Company $5,880,000 to advance the development of its CodaVax-DENV, a tetravalent live-attenuated dengue vaccine program.

The funds will support good manufacturing practices of drug substances and tetravalent drug product for a Phase 1 study, as well as a first-in-human Phase 1 safety and immunogenicity clinical trial.

This new award complements a $4.4 million DoD grant issued in 2022.

Codagenix's rational vaccine design platform is well-positioned to create a safe and effective dengue vaccine since its codon deoptimization process has the potential to provide immunity against all four dengue serotypes in a tetravalent formulation without the use of a backbone virus.

In addition to CodaVax-DENV, several dengue vaccine candidates are conducting clinical trials in 2023.

"We are honored to be selected for this award and would like to thank the DoD for their continued support, which is a recognition of the advantages of CodaVax-DENV, including codon deoptimization, homologous DENV 1, 2, 3, 4 strains, and the ability to titrate attenuation to develop balanced immunity," commented Jeffrey Fu, Ph.D., Chief Business Officer of Codagenix, in a related press release.

"These qualities uniquely position CodaVax-DENV to address the unmet needs in dengue prevention."

Dengue is a mosquito-borne viral infection, with over 2.4 billion people living in dengue-endemic areas worldwide; it is a leading cause of serious illness in several Latin American and Asian countries in 2023.

To alert international travelers of this health risk, the U.S. CDC recently issued Travel Health Notices regarding dengue outbreaks in the Americas  (September 25, 2023), Africa/Middle East (October 18, 2023), Costa Rica, and Asia/Pacific Islands (July 25, 2023). 

In the United States, Puerto Rico and Florida have reported the most dengue outbreaks in 2023.