Aeterna Zentaris Announces Expansion of Research Program with Julius-Maximilians-University Wuerzburg Aiming to Accelerate Development of Vaccine Programs

Aeterna Zentaris Inc. a specialty biopharmaceutical company developing and commercializing a diversified portfolio of pharmaceutical and diagnostic products, announced it has expanded the scope of its existing research program with the Julius-Maximilians-University Wuerzburg (“JMU”), on the development of COVID-19 and Chlamydia trachomatis vaccines. The expanded research activities will leverage JMU’s program involving three-dimensional models (“3D models”) of human intestinal tissues to study infection biology in the gut, the site of Salmonella primary action. The Company expects this approach to generate more relevant and predictive additional data for the regulatory process, while reducing the number of costly and time-consuming animal experiments.

Aeterna’s innovative vaccine technology aims to induce mucosal immunity for the potential prevention of infections and is designed to use two antigens for better protection against escape mutants of the pathogens, both believed to be advantageous features when compared to current vaccines.

“As coordinator of the Graduate College “3D Infect”, funded by the German Research Foundation, Prof. Rudel’s experience speaks for itself, and we believe that will be a tremendous asset to our efforts. He is already involved in the Inno4vac project supported by the European Innovative Medicines Initiative 2, focused on the design and application of advanced predictive human models for the development of vaccines,” commented Dr. Klaus Paulini, Chief Executive Officer of Aeterna Zentaris. “We are very pleased to broaden our scientific collaboration with Prof. Rudel and his group at JMU.”

Prof. Dr. Thomas Rudel of JMU, added, “Salmonella Typhi, the vaccine platform carrier strain used in the Aeterna vaccine program, is an obligatory human-pathogenic bacterium, which is taken up by specific mucosal cells of the human gastrointestinal tract. Direct contact to the mucosa-associated-lymphoid-tissue (MALT) induces a strong immune response. The high specificity of our Salmonella Typhi Ty21a vaccine strain for human tissue limits a validation in the complex intestinal tissues of animal models.”