Tiba wins BARDA contract to develop RNAi bird flu therapeutic – Fierce Biotech

The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) has awarded a $749,999 contract to Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Tiba Biotech to develop a new RNAi-based therapeutic against bird flu.

In a July 11 press release, Tiba announced that BARDA had selected it for an EZ-BAA contract under the Flexible and Strategic Therapeutics, or FASTx, program. FASTx is focused on creating a robust arsenal of treatment platforms that can be adapted quickly in the case of public health emergencies like pandemics, according to the initiatives website.

Tibas technology is a synthetic, biodegradable nanoparticle platform for delivering RNA-based therapies. Its meant to be an upgrade from lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) like the ones used in Pfizer and Modernas mRNA vaccines for COVID-19. For Tiba, the rationale is that while LNPs are safe at low levels, dosing is limited by the possibility of toxicity and inflammation. They also have a low payload capacity that prevents them from being useful for treating certain kinds of diseases that would require larger, more complex molecules. Furthermore, ongoing patent wars and high licensing fees make new LNP applications too expensive to get off the ground.

In contrast, Tibas platform can handle a payload capacity that is an order of magnitude greater than traditional LNPs, the company claims. That provides room for new RNA designs that express more of a single protein as well as multiple antigens. The particles can perhaps handle other complex machinery, too, making them theoretically useful not just for vaccines but also CRISPR/Cas9 systems and smart RNA circuits for gene therapy, per Tibas website. The company plans to engineer therapies not only for infectious disease but also autoimmune conditions, allergies and oncology applications.

Tibas new work with BARDA will see the company develop an RNAi-based treatment for the bird flu strain H1N1. It will build upon existing work on a multi-antigen, mRNA-based H7N9 vaccine, the preclinical development of which is being funded by a National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease grant. The company also was recently accepted into a joint initiative between BARDA and Johnson & Johnson called Blue Knight, another project to boost pandemic and public health crisis preparedness.

Tibahas raised around $4 million in funding so far from organizations including the Gates Foundation on top of around $4 million in grants, with another $12 million in agreements for research support from both domestic and international government agencies.

Editor's note: This article was updated on July 11 to correct that Tiba is not making a vaccine for the bird flu, but an RNAi-based treatment. A previous version of this story mentioned that the company had worked on a treatment for the Zika virus; this research preceded the company's formation.

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Tiba wins BARDA contract to develop RNAi bird flu therapeutic - Fierce Biotech