Contact: Jay Evans, research professor, UM Center for Translational Medicine director, 406-
381-0573, jay.evans@umontana.edu.
UM Leads $12.3M Contract to Advance TB Vaccine
UM News Service
MISSOULA – The National Institutes of Health recently awarded a $12.3 million contract
to the University of Montana to develop a novel vaccine adjuvant for use in a tuberculosis
vaccine. Adjuvants are substances that boost the effectiveness of vaccines.
The five-year award went to UM’s Center for Translational Medicine and its partners.
The contract is titled “Development of UM-1098: A Novel Synthetic Th17 Inducing Adjuvant and
Delivery System.”
“The development and clinical evaluation of safe and effective adjuvants is urgently
needed for the advancement of vaccines to combat the ongoing threat of bacterial and fungal
infections, including tuberculosis, pertussis and others,” said Jay Evans, director of the UM
center. “TB affects a significant portion of the global population, and the only licensed vaccine,
BCG, has limited effectiveness. Thus the development of an effective vaccine is critical to end
the global TB epidemic.”
According to the World Health Organization, 1.6 million people died from TB in 2021.
Worldwide, TB is the 13th leading cause of death and second leading infectious killer after
COVID-19 (above HIV and AIDS).
Drs. Evans and Walid Abdelwahab are the co-principal investigators on the contract,
along with their colleagues Drs. David Burkhart, Asia Riel and Blair DeBuysscher with Center for
Translational Medicine. The project also includes researchers from the University of Chicago
(Dr. Shabaana Khadar), the Texas Biomedical Research Institute (Dr. Smriti Mehra) and
Missoula-based Inimmune Corp., a corporate development partner (Drs. Kendal Ryter and
Shannon Miller).
Evans said vaccine development for TB and other bacterial and fungal pathogens has
been hampered by the lack of appropriate adjuvants and effective formulations. This new
contract builds upon a recently completed $13 million NIH Adjuvant Discovery Contract, which
identified the lead candidate being advanced towards human clinical trials in the current award.
“This funding represents tremendous support for our continuous research efforts in
advancing safe and efficient adjuvants and formulation strategies for further development of
vaccine candidates against TB,” Abdelwahab said. “This contract is a strong endorsement of our
exceptional vaccine research team at UM.”
The project involves a large vaccine research team at UM with more than two decades
of research on improving vaccines through the use of adjuvants – components added to
vaccines to improve the immune response – and novel delivery systems to ensure vaccines are
safely and efficiently delivered to the targeted cells. The UM research will involve both
undergraduate and graduate students, providing them with an opportunity to do research on a
new vaccine that may have a profound impact on global health.
“There is extraordinary research ongoing at UM that could positively impact the lives of
countless people,” Evans said. “Our Vaccine Research Team is dedicated to nurturing and
cultivating an interactive research community at UM, specifically geared toward advancing these
technologies to help individuals and communities in Montana and across the globe.”
Inimmune is a biotech company located at the University’s business incubator, MonTEC.
It will assist with vaccine manufacturing efforts and advancement of this new technology to
human clinical trials. The Inimmune efforts will be led by Ryter, the company’s vice president of
manufacturing and development.
“Inimmune is very excited to be chosen as a collaborator to advance this exciting new
technology,” Ryter said. “Adjuvants and immunomodulators that effectively drive a Th17-biased
immune response are not part of the standard vaccine tool kit, and we see this approach as
having tremendous potential in developing therapies for some of the most difficult to treat and
impactful infectious diseases in the world, such as TB.”
Founded in 2016, Inimmune focuses on the discovery and development of new
immunomodulatory therapeutics for treatment of allergic diseases, cancer and infectious
disease.
About Inimmune Corporation
Inimmune Corp. (Missoula, MT) is a privately held biotechnology company focused on the discovery and development of innovative immunotherapeutics, vaccine adjuvants, and vaccines. Inimmune is harnessing the human immune system to create safe and effective treatments for allergy, infectious disease, autoimmunity, and cancer. Their laboratories and offices are housed in the Montana Technology Enterprise Center (MonTEC) in Missoula.
For more information on Inimmune’s research and development of novel vaccine adjuvants and delivery systems, please visit www.inimmune.com.
