Oral Chlamydia Vaccine Candidate Begins Development

Blue Water Vaccines Inc. announced the signing of an exclusive, global license agreement to develop a live attenuated, oral Chlamydia vaccine candidate from The University of Texas Health San Antonio.

Developed in the laboratory of Guangming Zhong, Ph.D., at UT Health San Antonio, the novel, pre-human clinical trial vaccine candidate utilizes a live attenuated Chlamydia strain, Chlamydia muridarum.

As of November 22, 2022, no U.S. FDA-approved vaccine is available to prevent chlamydia infection.

“With millions of new and existing infections each year and no preventative treatment available, there remains a large unmet need for an efficacious Chlamydia vaccine both here in the U.S. and on a global scale,” said Joseph Hernandez, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Cincinnati-based Blue Water Vaccines, in a press release on November 21, 2022.

“We are thrilled to enter into this partnership with UT Health San Antonio and to pursue the development of this groundbreaking vaccine candidate.”

After oral delivery of the vaccine, C. muridarum was able to colonize in the gastrointestinal tract of mice and induce transmucosal protection against genital tract Chlamydia infection without altering the gut microbiota or the development of gut mucosal resident memory T cell responses to a non-chlamydial infection.

In addition, the vaccine was shown to be nonpathogenic in mice, indicating the potential to develop the live attenuated C. muridarum vaccine into a protective human Chlamydia vaccine.

According to the U.S. CDC, Chlamydia is the most frequently reported bacterial Sexually Transmitted Diseases Infections in the United States, with about 1.6 million new cases reported in 2020.

New cases of Chlamydia may be underrepresented, given many patients are asymptomatic.

And the primary treatment is through antibiotic regimens with the possibility of reinfection after antibiotics have treated the disease.

If undetected or left untreated, Chlamydia represents a significant cause of pelvic inflammatory disease and infertility in women.

Blue Water Vaccines Inc. is a biopharmaceutical company focused on developing transformational vaccines to address significant health challenges globally.