The current ‘Gold Standard’ DNA vaccine vectors have been in use for more than a decade, and are badly in need of improvements. Careful redesign and testing is needed, including consideration of: potency, safety, targeting, co-stimulation, regulatory compliance, and production economics.

NTC’s improved DNA vaccines (the pDNAVACCUltra^TM family of vectors) are designed for rapid development and deployment of critical antigens that are ‘destination targeted’, for example: secreted, membrane anchored, endosomal or endoplasmic reticulum (MHC class II vs. MHC class I). NTC’s DNA vaccines optionally are equipped with RNA elements (RNAe) for eliciting tunable innate immune responses in concert with antigen expression. pDNAVACCUltra^TM vectors are optimized according to regulatory guidance in Points to Consider documents, and others. Expression is enhanced above previous Gold-Standard vectors, improving immunogenicity through an improved CMV enhancer promoter and advanced mRNA structural elements. Novel antibiotic-free versions of the vectors are available (for world regulatory compliance, as well as for reduced metabolic burden during bacterial amplification of the plasmids), and this improvement further reduces the backbone size by approximately 500bp. Potency is thus enhanced over existing vectors through reduction (also lowering production costs significantly), and by adding to the payload capacity of cargo-limited delivery vehicles, such as gold beads. pDNAVACCUltra^TM plasmid backbones are optimized for HyperGRO^TM process fermentation yield in E. coli production host strains (>2g/L), so you won’t be stuck with an expensive, low yielding fermentation process once your vaccine is licensed. Finally, NTC has pioneered a strain engineering technique (Genome Mass Transfer [GMT^TM]), allowing for rapid elimination of the toxic effects of certain antigens (such as hemagglutinin H3) when plasmids are amplified in E. coli. Altogether, the combined effects of NTC’s vector improvements to add up to significant advantages in potency, effectiveness and production economics.

Also, NTC’s RapidVACC^TM service allows the preparation of rationally designed vaccines against emerging antigens in as little as two weeks, using synthetic genetics. pDNAVACCUltra^TM vectors are compatible with a variety of advanced delivery modalities, including: gene gun; electroporation; microneedles; PEI; lipids, hydrodynamic or mucosal delivery, etc. RapidVACC is thus a intended to be a potential pandemic deployment resource of primary importance and availability for emergency responses.

NTC’s HyperGRO^TM fed-batch production process is also available for production of research grade and GMP grade plasmids, serving your clinical trial needs and providing a path forward for production in your own facilities post-licensure.