On Dec. 5, 2024, formulation technology company VitriVax, Inc. of Boulder, Colorado was awarded a two-year, $3.6 million grant by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to help “fund development of a polio vaccine formulation for possible inclusion in combination pediatric vaccines.” “We are honored to be part of the global drive to protect children from polio infection and contribute to polio eradication efforts,” said VitriVax’s CEO Romulo Colindres, MD, MPH.1 2
According to Vitrivax, it “will be applying its proprietary Atomic Layering Thermostable Antigen and Adjuvant (ALTA) technology to new polio vaccine candidates composed of virus-like particles (VLPs) for use in future combination hexavalent (six in one) vaccines.” It noted that use of VLPs is being studied for the next generation of polio vaccines. VitriVax believes that its ALTA technology could “facilitate the co-formulation of multiple, otherwise incompatible, antigens in a single injection.1 2
New Adjuvant Technology Could Revolutionize Vaccines
On its website, Vitrivax acknowledges that there are “two central technological challenges” that often limit the expanded use of some vaccines. The first challenge is to maintain a vaccine’s thermostability—the ability to resist irreversible change in its chemical or physical structure—during transport and storage. The second is the need to give multiple doses of a vaccine to allow for the most robust immune response possible to infections. VitriVax believes that ALTA is a revolutionary technology that has the potential to enable the production of more thermostable, multiple-dose vaccines and, thus, “redefine the future of vaccine technology.”3 4
Hellbound and Down 