Soligenix and Emergent BioSolutions team up on ricin exposure vaccine

Late-stage biopharma company Soligenix has initiated a development agreement with Emergent BioSolutions.

The agreement is to implement a commercially-viable, scalable production technology for the RiVax drug substance protein antigen. It is a vaccine candidate being developed to protect against ricin exposure. Soligenix will transfer manufacturing and analytics to Emergent to conduct process development work that could potentially lead to a future commercial manufacturing collaboration.

The company has been developing RiVax in conjunction with its heat stabilization technology ThermoVax as a heat-stable biodefense vaccine. RiVax has demonstrated 100% protection in a preclinical model of lethal ricin exposure and stability up to one year at 40 degrees Celsius, facilitating storage at ambient temperature. It is being developed to move beyond the need for cold-chain shipment and storage.