Biomira Inc. - R&D Services

Biomira Inc.
Research
The core of Biomira's research interests lie in the development of novel therapeutic vaccines for the treatment of various human cancers. These vaccines are known as Active Specific Immunotherapy agents as they are designed to induce specific immune responses to known tumor associated antigens. The development of the technology for these vaccines results from the convergence of three areas of scientific expertise at Biomira: synthetic organic chemistry, biochemistry and immunology.
About our Research
Biomira's Chemistry group has developed numerous patented and proprietary technologies for the synthesis of large amounts of pure complex carbohydrates, glycopeptides, glycolipids, glycolipopeptides and adjuvants. This is one of the technologies which has allowed Biomira to develop the tumor associate antigen sialyl Tn as part of Biomira's cancer vaccine formulation, Theratope? vaccine. Our unique combination of organic chemistry and immunology expertise is being leveraged in the design, synthesis and testing of complex molecules of immunological interest that can be used in vaccine formulations. The advantages of pure, well characterized synthetic compounds over naturally extracted ones include reproducible and known purity, control of quality and supply and scaleable manufacture. It also allows for patentability of both composition of matter and process as well as for methods of use of these novel compounds.
The liposome - based vaccine technology being developed by Biomira is a completely synthetic composition of antigen, adjuvants and lipomatrix. The first example in clinical trials of this platform technology is BLP25 Liposome Vaccine (L-BLP25), a liposomal vaccine specifically designed to generate a cellular immune response to the tumor associated antigen mucin MUC1. Although the adjuvant used in L-BLP25 is a naturally extracted lipid A, subsequent liposomal vaccine formulations in pre-clinical development use a patented synthetic analogue of lipid A of similar potency. Other versions of our liposomal vaccines in development allow the generation and manipulation of both cellular and humoral immune responses to the target antigen. This allows the tailoring of liposomal vaccine formulations for different clinical requirements. In addition, a number of other tumor associated antigens are under development for incorporation into the liposomal vaccine technology platform. Biomira also believes that the liposomal vaccine technology platform may be equally applicable to infectious disease antigens, particularly for chronic diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria and hepatitis.
Biomira is actively seeking in-licensing and partnering opportunities to expand the repertoire of tumor associated antigens and infectious disease antigens with our liposomal vaccine platform technology.
Biomira Inc.
2011-94 Street
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
T6N 1H1
Telephone: (780) 450-3761
Fax: (780) 450-4772