$749,999 Contract Supports Development of Swine Flu Therapeutic

Tiba Biotech LLC today announced its new partnership with the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) through the initiation of an EZ-BAA contract to develop groundbreaking therapeutics against influenza.

The U.S. $749,999 BARDA contract supports early-stage therapeutic platform development for the Flexible and Strategic Therapeutics program.

This BARDA initiative aims to advance cutting-edge therapeutic platform technologies, such as RNA-mediated interference, which could be rapidly deployed in response to emerging viral threats. The therapeutic will target the highly conserved viral nucleoprotein and will be delivered via Tiba’s RNABLTM platform.

Tiba Biotech’s initial focus will be developing a prototype RNAi-based therapeutic for H1N1 influenza (swine flu), a type of influenza A virus.

Every year, there are rare, sporadic human infections with influenza viruses that usually circulate in pigs and not people, says the U.S. CDC.

On June 28, 2024, the CDC reported the second and third U.S. human infections in 2024.

This initiative is a natural extension of Tiba’s ongoing work combating influenza pandemic threats, most notably in the form of a novel multi-antigen mRNA-based H7N9 flu vaccine funded under a Phase II SBIR award from the National Institutes of Health and ongoing collaborations with the Collaborative Influenza Vaccine Innovation Centers.

Tiba was also recently accepted into BLUE KNIGHT™, a joint initiative between Johnson & Johnson Innovation—JLABS and BARDA. The initiative aims to harness innovation to combat future known and unknown health threats.