Neil Crabb, Frontier IP CEO

The Vaccine Group completed a £680,000 equity fundraiser in January 2020 that valued TVG at £9.5 million and Frontier IP’s 17% shareholding at £1.6m. The funds are being used by TVG to accelerate technology development. 

The vaccine is an animal vaccine, based on novel technology as bovine tuberculosis and African Swine Fever vaccines move into field trials.

The investor has highlighted the material progress which The Vaccine Group is making with its technology and the start of work on the vaccine.

The key points include validation of the technology through successful rabbit trials, which have revealed the potential for new intellectual property, the start of animal trials for bovine tuberculosis and African Swine Fever, and good progress on US government-backed work on Ebola and Lassa fever vaccines.

The steps taken by The Vaccine Group are as follows:

Rabbit trials of a prototype bovine mastitis vaccine have revealed significant potential for new intellectual property and demonstrated the technology’s ability to deliver strong, targeted immune responses

• Vaccines to combat bovine tuberculosis and African Swine Fever Virus are about to enter initial animal trials. It has been less than a year since the Company started work on African Swine Fever
• US government-backed work to develop vaccines to tackle Ebola and Lassa fever virus are making good progress
• The Company has started work on coronavirus vaccines for use in animals to prevent future human coronavirus zoonotic emergence and will be working in partnership with Shanghai Veterinary Research Institute in China and Kansas State University.

Neil Crabb, Frontier IP chief executive officer, said: “The announcement shows TVG has been making great progress to date in meeting the compelling need for vaccines to tackle diseases with profound human and economic costs.

“The range of vaccines now under development and the success of trials so far proves the technology could be potent in tackling a wide variety of diseases that jump from animals to humans or are damaging economically.

“We’re working closely with the company to accelerate its vital work.”

Dr Michael Jarvis, associate professor, TVG Founder and chief scientific officer, commented: “As COVID-19 has shown, the spillover of disease from animals to humans can have a very high social, economic and commercial cost globally.

“Naturally there has been a swift move into funding the development of human vaccines and therapeutics, but to date we are not aware of any approaches to eliminate Covid-19 in the animal population to prevent future outbreaks or re-emergence of the disease.”