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AIM: FIPP

17 October 2024

Frontier IP Group plc

("Frontier IP" or the "Group")

Portfolio news - Innovate UK awards Smart grant of more than £400,000 to The Vaccine Group and the Animal and Plant Health Agency

Frontier IP, a specialist in commercialising intellectual property, today notes the following announcement from the University of Plymouth that portfolio company The Vaccine Group ("TVG" or the "Company") and The Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) have been awarded an Innovate UK Smart grant of more than £400,000.

The grant money will be used to develop vaccines for use in cattle based on TVG's novel herpesvirus-based antigen delivery platform. Two diseases are initially being targeted: bovine respiratory syncytial virus (BRSV) and lumpy skin disease (LSD). BRSV is widespread globally and causes severe economic harm, while LSD is spreading rapidly. Frontier IP holds a 17 per cent stake in the Company.

APHA is an executive agency of the  Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra), and also works on behalf of the Scottish and Welsh governments. Itis responsible for animal, plant and bee health in the UK.

The Innovate UK grant and APHA collaboration is the latest in a series of awards and partnerships announced by TVG this year. In September 2024, Defra awarded more than £1 million to a project led by TVG, the University of Plymouth and the University of Cambridge to develop vaccine candidates to tackle Streptococcus suis, an emerging zoonotic disease prevalent in pigs. Earlier this year the Company announced a collaboration with The Pirbright Institute to develop vaccines to combat African swine fever.

Frontier IP Chief Executive Officer Neil Crabb said: "I am delighted with this latest grant award for TVG and the collaboration with the Animal and Plant Health Agency. The number of awards and the prestigious organisations the Company is working with provides a strong validation of its novel technology. We are very excited about its potential."

The Vaccine Group statement begins:

IUK Smart grant awarded to The Vaccine Group and APHA for cattle vaccine platform development

The Animal and Plant Health Agency [APHA], Surrey and The Vaccine Group Ltd., Plymouth, are delighted to announce that Innovate UK has awarded them a Smart grant in excess of £400,000. The grant will be used to further develop a novel viral vector platform for the delivery of vaccine antigens for use in cattle, in a project that will last for 19 months.

The technology that has been developed by scientists at TVG's laboratories in Plymouth, Devon, has been used to create candidate vaccines for several important infectious diseases in cattle worldwide. In this project candidate vaccines for two diseases will be used to demonstrate the capabilities of the technology. 

 The two diseases for which candidate vaccines have been created by TVG for this project are bovine respiratory syncytial virus (BRSV) and lumpy skin disease (LSD). BRSV is the leading viral cause of respiratory illness in young calves in the UK, impacting around 1.9 million calves annually and costing approximately £54 million. The virus is prevalent worldwide and poses a substantial economic burden on both beef and dairy producers. In the last 10 years, LSDV has spread dramatically outside its natural enzootic geographies in Africa and the Middle East, causing severe disease in first eastern Europe, and then SE Asia and now the Far East.

 Working with key opinion leaders for the two diseases in the UK and Canada respectively, TVG has inserted transgenes for protective antigens from each virus into two separate constructs through genetic manipulation. Both vaccine candidates have been shown to be stable genetically and have demonstrated stable and prolonged protein expression in tissue culture over multiple passages. Both diseases have broad global prevalence, with BRSV especially affecting intensively reared cattle globally. Currently available commercial vaccines for BRSV do not prevent shedding and are restricted from use in very young calves by maternal immunity.  There are no DIVA vaccines available for LSD currently, which limits their use in areas where serosurveillance and eradication programmes are in place. TVG's candidate vaccines will address all of these issues.  

 In addition to the scientific inputs from TVG and APHA staff from the Department of Pathology and Animal Sciences, the project will be supported by the World Reference Laboratory for Non-Vesicular Diseases at The Pirbright Institute, Surrey, to determine how the vaccine candidates can produce an adequate serological response in animals and protect cattle from these diseases.    

 Dr Jeremy Salt, Chief Executive Officer at The Vaccine Group, said: "For cattle farmers around the globe infectious diseases are a major cause for concern and can lead to significant losses - both in terms of animal health and welfare, and in financial terms. Our goal in developing a viral vector platform for use in cattle effective vaccines is to overcome some of the deficiencies that affect the current commercialised vaccines. By doing so, we can better protect the farmers, their animals and their livelihoods. We can also make beef and milk production more efficient, humane and sustainable, at the same time helping the sector address the global challenges of antibiotic resistance and carbon emissions." 

The project will build on previous research by The Vaccine Group, through which the potential candidates for these vaccines were identified. 

The technology works by administering a benign virus to cattle which in turn stimulates the expression of proteins that induce an immune response in the animals to a pathogen. The new trials will explore its potential to protect against different infectious diseases of cattle. 

The Vaccine Group Statement ends

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ABOUT FRONTIER IP

Frontier IP unites science, finance and industry by identifying strong intellectual property and accelerating its development through a range of commercialisation services. A critical part of the Group's work is involving relevant industry partners at an early stage of development to ensure technology meets real world demands and needs.

The Group looks to build and grow a portfolio of equity stakes and licence income by taking an active involvement in spin-out companies, including support for fund raising and collaboration with relevant industry partners at an early stage of development.

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