Vaccine program

Genocea Biosciences Inc. will be working with the Naval Medical Research Center on identifying antigens that could help develop a vaccine to fight malaria. The U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command awarded a $2.7 million grant to Cambridge’s Genocea to fund the research. The Naval center and Genocea specifically entered into a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement that will have researchers working on a vaccine candidate against Plasmodium falciparum, the parasite that causes malaria. The two entities will move the most promising candidates through preclinical development as part of the agreement. Genocea will use its platform of human T-cell screens against a library of the P. falciparum proteome. According to Genocea officials, malaria causes nearly a million deaths and hundreds of millions of clinical cases each year, with about 1,500 cases in the United States each year.
http://www.masshightech.com/stories/2010/04/12/daily39-Genocea-to-co-develop-malaria-vaccine-with-Navy-Army.html