Longhorn Vaccines and Diagnostics to Showcase Breakthrough Vaccine Data at IDWeek 2024

Bottles of vaccine and syringe

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Longhorn Vaccines and Diagnostics, a One Health-focused company, unveiled promising data on its innovative vaccine candidates, LHNVD-110 and LHNVD-303, at IDWeek 2024. The conference, which was held in Los Angeles, California, from October 16 to 19, 2024, spotlighted advancements in infectious diseases.

LHNVD-110, Longhorn’s universal influenza vaccine candidate, and LHNVD-303, its antimicrobial-resistant (AMR) sepsis vaccine candidate, aim to address critical global health challenges. AMR, responsible for millions of deaths annually, highlights the urgent need for alternatives to traditional antibiotics. LHNVD-303 tackles this threat by targeting resistant bacterial strains using a novel cocktail of lipoteichoic acid, lipopolysaccharide, and peptidoglycan.

Longhorn presented research on Universal Influenza Vaccine Research and AMR Sepsis Vaccine Research.

To learn more about Longhorn’s research, Infection Control Today^® (ICT^®) spoke with Jeff Fischer, president of Longhorn Vaccines and Diagnostics.

ICT: Can you share more details about the development of LHNVD-110, your universal influenza vaccine candidate, and how it differs from existing influenza vaccines on the market?

Jeff Fischer: Our vaccine doesn’t target specific strains of influenza but key components of the virus that are found across all strains. These targets are important in the virus’s ability to replicate. By targeting conserved areas of the virus, the vaccine can be given yearly without reformulating. Our approach also promotes longer immunity, allowing the vaccine to be given at any time of the year and potentially every 5 to 10 years, making it more convenient to patients and health care providers.

ICT: With antimicrobial resistance (AMR) being such a pressing global issue, how does your AMR sepsis vaccine candidate, LHNVD-303, specifically target treatment-resistant bacteria strains, and what makes this approach innovative?

JF: Our AMR sepsis vaccine is the culmination of 50 years of research on preventing bacterial sepsis. It targets key components of the cell wall of both gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria, which serve as targets for clearing the bacteria and their role in inflammation. These bacterial toxins play a significant role in sepsis and have been implicated in diseases from Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Type II diabetes, and heart disease.

ICT: Your research focuses on using conserved epitopes for your universal influenza and AMR sepsis vaccines. Can you explain the advantages of targeting these conserved regions for vaccine development?

JF: Targeting conserved regions of pathogens allows for greater breath and coverage. It also makes it more difficult for pathogens to evolve away from a target to escape.

ICT: Given that Longhorn Vaccines and Diagnostics emphasizes a One Health approach, how do your products, such as PrimeStore MTM, align with the broader goal of addressing both human and zoonotic disease transmission?

JF: Influenza is a virus found in humans, companion animals, livestock, and wildlife. The virus can move between species, mutating, and reassorting, leading to potential pandemic strains. Bacteria live within humans and animals. Their ability to overwhelm the immune system causes disease and death across species. The toxins released by these bacteria cause inflammation in both humans and animals.

ICT: As LHNVD-110 and LHNVD-303 advance, what are the next steps in clinical trials, and how do you envision these vaccines impacting public health, particularly in preventing future pandemics and combatting antimicrobial resistance?

JF: We are working to aggressively get both products into clinical trials. The influenza vaccine should provide greater annual protection and be, at the very least, a good base in the event a pandemic strain were to emerge. Our bacterial sepsis vaccine should greatly reduce antibiotic use and could impact many of the most significant healthcare conditions associated with aging.