year of the pig vaccine, page-2

PAV Merial Vaccine
Introduction
Imugene is developing a vaccine using its platform PAV technology and Merial antigens for an economically important disease in pigs. Imugene must keep the identify of the disease confidential. The disease treated by the PAV Merial vaccine is a clinical syndrome of pigs identified in Canada in 1996 but has since spread throughout Europe, Asia and the United States. The disease is usually associated with high health status herds and normally inflicts young pigs 6 to 16 weeks of age, but especially between 8-12 weeks.

Effective control of the disease is one of the major difficulties in pig production as there are no effective treatments and limited vaccines available. The cost of the disease and its ability to persist continues to cause significant economic loss to major pig producers.

The Imugene Adenoviral Delivery Technology is perfectly suited to providing an effective and viable treatment for this pig disease. The PAV Merial vaccine is suitable for mass delivery, is safe and can allow differentiation between vaccinated and infected pigs.

The market opportunity for an effective vaccine is large given the lack of competitors and Imugene is working to develop this product to ensure it is first to market.

Current Studies
Imugene has produced a vaccine candidate using its Adenoviral Delivery Technology together with patented and confidential genetic material provided and owned by Merial. The vaccine candidate is undergoing reconstruction to incorporate the new promoter and a recent improvement with the platform Porcine Adenoviral Delivery Technology. The initial vaccine candidate has been trialed in Europe with promising results. Now that the PAV patent interference has been resolved it is expected Merial will recommence animal trials in Europe in 2006/2007