Nordic Life Science 1
TOP STORIES BUSINESS R&D The world’s first resear
ch center for cluster headaches Caroline Ran, Research Specialist, and Andrea Carmine Belin, Associate Professor, Karolinska Institutet Thanks to a donation of 35 million SEK from financier and VA C C I NE EVAXION AND EXPRES2ION COLLABORATE The collaborators have signed a Vaccine Discovery Collaboration Agreement for the joint development of a novel cytomegalovirus vaccine candidate. EVAXION WILL USE its AI platform, RAVEN to design a vaccine candidate that elicits both cellular and humoral/antibody responses. The antigen constructs derived will be produced by ExpreS2ion in the company’s ExpreS2 platform, followed by assessments in Evaxion’s preclinical models. The joint discovery project will be included in Evaxion’s development pipeline under EVX-V1. Under the terms of the collaboration, ExpreS2ion will have the exclusive rights to license the CMV vaccine candidate. The research and intellectual property licensing costs for the collaboration project will be divided 50/50 between the parties until 2025, with all costs expected to be contained in each party’s existing operating expenses. A potential future Development and Commercialization Agreement for the jointly discovered candidate is expected to include an upfront payment and future milestone payments to Evaxion not exceeding a sixdigit USD amount, as well as sub-licensing royalty to Evaxion based on mid to lower two-digit percentage range of third-party licensee income depending on the clinical development stage of the CMV asset at the time of sublicensing. philanthropist Rune Andersson, Karolinska Institutet’s research group leader Andrea Carmine Belin will very soon be setting up the world’s first research center specializing exclusively in cluster headaches. THE AIM OF creating a center is to make it easier and faster to combine preclinical and clinical research. Working in parallel like this will bring advances and breakthroughs to patients more quickly. The center will also facilitate international collaboration and the rapid exchange of knowledge. “Our researchers are already making progress in the field, and we aim to get closer to a final solution to this medical mystery,” says Andrea Carmine Belin. The Centre for Cluste Headache will be based at the Department of Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet. 14 | NORDICLIFESCIENCE.ORG PHOTO STEFAN ZIMMERMAN