Gaithersburg-based GenVec will work on developing a malaria vaccine for the U.S. military, the company announced Monday.
The company is pursuing the goal under two separate agreements.
One is a collaborative research and development agreement, without funding attached, with the U.S. Military Malaria Vaccine Program and the Naval Medical Research Center. Under this agreement, the firm will do development and pre-clinical testing against one strain of the virus, called Plasmodium vivax.
The other is a one-year contract with a $250,000 base value from the Department of Defense, said Sharon Weinstein, director of corporate communications for GenVec. Under the contract, GenVec will construct and test the vaccine.
“This broadens our work in the development of a vaccine for malaria, which is a huge health problem and which has a big economic impact on a lot of different countries,” Weinstein said.
The P. vivax strain is the culprit in more than 50 percent of the military cases of malaria, Weinstein said.
GenVec previously had a collaborative agreement to work with the same institutions on the more deadly strain of malaria, which is caused by the P. falciparum virus. The firm’s vaccine for that strain went into human clinical trials in January. Much of GenVec’s work on that program was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Weinstein said.
