We believe that our proprietary technologies have the potential to transform the design and development of vaccines. In December 2007, Maxygen licensed its dengue vaccine program to sanofi pasteur, the vaccines division of sanofi-aventis. We currently have an active program to advance the research for development of a preventative HIV vaccine. Other vaccine programs available for out-licensing include malaria, hepatitis B, and Venezuelan/Western equine encephalitis.

Our HIV vaccine research program is being funded by research grants from the National Institutes of Health, or NIH, and the U.S. Department of Defense. In 2005 the NIH awarded us two competitive grants, including $11.7 million over approximately five years, as part of the HIV Research and Development (HIVRAD) program. The HIVRAD grant provides funds for the use of our MolecularBreeding™ directed evolution platform to generate novel HIV-1 antigens potentially capable of inducing broad antibody responses to multiple strains of the HIV-1 virus. We were also awarded a one-year contract of $2.4 million in 2005 from the Department of Defense for HIV vaccine discovery, which has since been extended for a second year.

Additional reading:

Dengue vaccines: http://www.pdvi.org/vaccines/vaccine.htm
HIV vaccines:  http://www3.niaid.nih.gov/research/topics/HIV/vaccines/

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