InvVax is commercializing the world’s first universal influenza vaccine.
We mapped the entire flu genome. Over three years, the founder Arthur Young tediously went through all 13,000 nucleotide positions and generated a comprehensive map of the genome through a functional screen. We used the map to identify the 28 regions of the virus that cannot mutate without it self-destructing.
InvVax’s key differentiator is that our vaccine targets only invariant positions. Our direct competitors are targeting conserved regions only. These are regions of the virus that are the same between most flu strains in nature. Targeting conserved regions addresses the first problem with seasonal vaccines, the mismatch of predicted and circulating strains. But it does nothing to address the second main problem, the mutation of the virus. Our functional screen revealed that the majority of conserved residues are actually not invariant.
These invariant regions and the screening methodology used to identify them are patent-pending. InvVax has secured an exclusive option on this technology from UCLA. In addition, we are developing a much broader patent strategy with Wilson Sonsini.