Omniose, a preclinical biotechnology company, announced an exclusive collaboration agreement with AstraZeneca to research potential vaccines for bacterial pathogens in AstraZeneca’s early Vaccines & Immune Therapies pipeline.

Under the terms of the agreement, AstraZeneca will have exclusive rights to Omniose’s proprietary bioconjugation platform for up to three years, which allows for the development of high-quality vaccines against a range of bacterial pathogens, including multidrug-resistant “superbugs” previously intractable by other methods.

Conjugate vaccines are an effective form of immunization however, their use is limited due to the complex chemical process of attaching bacterial polysaccharides to engineered carrier proteins. Bioconjugation greatly streamlines the manufacturing process compared to chemical conjugation and may produce a higher quality vaccine.

Christian Harding, CSO & Co-founder of Omniose, added: “Our synthetic biology platform is the broadest enzyme-based bioconjugation system enabling the transfer of virtually any bacterial polysaccharide to engineered carrier proteins.”

Mark Esser, Vice President, Early R&D Vaccines & Immune Therapies AstraZeneca, commented: “As serious bacterial infections become increasingly resistant to commonly-used antibiotics, the development of alternative preventative interventions is critical. As part of our ambition to provide long-lasting immunity to millions of people, we are excited to enter into this scientific collaboration with Omniose to explore the role of this novel bioconjugate platform in developing vaccines for bacterial pathogens.”

Timothy Cooke, CEO of Omniose said: “AstraZeneca has deep expertise in leveraging next-generation technology to advance infectious disease research and we are proud to collaborate with them to realize the full potential of our conjugate vaccine platform.”