In the spirit of the holidays, Innovation After Hours focused on celebration of the successes and the contributions made to the Northern Colorado technology community. The program started with a thank you to outgoing Director of the Larimer Bioscience Cluster, Kathy Kregel. Kregel’s contributions to area startups include the four years she served as Director of the Bioscience Cluster, the seven years she served as Director of the Fort Collins Technology Incubator and another seven years serving as Director of the Loveland Center for Business Development. The program then moved on to celebrate Inviragen’s graduation from the Incubator program. Inviragen, the first bioscience company to join the Fort Collins Incubator in 2006, was represented by founder and CEO Dr. Dan Stinchcomb, who gave an overview of the company and an update on its lead product, a Dengue fever vaccine.
Stinchcomb was surprised by the level of audience familiarity with Dengue fever, which is a vector borne disease transmitted by mosquitoes in many warm and moist climates including Southeast Asia and South and Central America. Based on technology licensed from the CDC, Inviragen has a vaccine in development that should protect against all four strains of Dengue, a key challenge in combating Dengue. The foundation for the Inviragen product is a vaccine that proved effective against Dengue-2 over 20 years ago. CDC scientists were able to isolate the mutations on this vaccine that rendered the virus relatively harmless and use recombinant DNA to combine these mutations with the outer coating proteins of the other three strains of Dengue. When these four products are administered in combination, several animal models have demonstrated that the vaccine will cause the body to produce antibodies, and thus immunity, to all four strains of Dengue.
Inviragen has partnered with Shantha Biotechnics of India for vaccine production and plans to begin clinical work commencing Phase 1 studies in 2009. Stinchcomb thinks the product could reach market by 2013. Potential sales channels for the vaccine include public health markets, private markets in countries such as India with an expanding middle class, as well as travelers from the US and Europe who plan to visit regions with Dengue. To date, Inviragen has raised about $5.5 million through a combination of angel investment and grants. Inviragen is focused on developing vaccines which Stinchcomb noted as “the most cost effective way to treat disease.” Along with the lead Dengue product, Inviragen has development programs for Chikungunya (a mosquito-borne disease found mainly in Africa that results in arthritis), West Nile Virus, Avian Flu, and biodefense.
Innovation After Hours, occurring monthly on Wednesdays, is a premier networking and education forum open to all members of the community that will be of special interest to those in scientific, technology and creative fields. It showcases the best and brightest innovators, scientists and entrepreneurs in Northern Colorado and around the world. The event is sponsored by the City of Fort Collins, the Stonehouse Grille, and Ehrhardt, Keefe, Steiner, and Hottman PC. The group will resume meeting in January – topic TBD. For more information please visit RMI2.
