VACC-ZERA

DNA/RNA Vaccine Platform

What is VACC-ZERA?

ZIP Solutions’ proprietary VACC-ZERA technology is an innovative tool to generate recombinant proteins in microparticles, especially suited for therapeutic and prophylactic adjuvant free vaccines that can be administered as DNA vaccines.

How does VACC-ZERA work?

VACC-ZERA DNA vaccines are administered as pDNA consisting of the fusion of VACC-ZERA with the antigen of interest. Once internalized inside the cells, VACC-ZERA-antigen fusion protein is synthesized, processed and stored inside natural microparticles (Protein Bodies, PBs). These constitute a reservoir where the antigen is kept highly stable, allowing a slow and sustained release and, overall, enhancing the immune response. This localization of the expressed antigen has a positive effect on its presentation since VACC-ZERA Microparticles are avidly uptaken and processed by APCs.

Why VACC-ZERA?

VACC-ZERA DNA vaccines combine the advantages of the high performing VACC-ZERA peptide as immune response enhancer with the inherent benefits of DNA vaccines. VACC-ZERA DNA vaccines trigger the generation of antigen microparticles in the vaccinated organism and the high stability of the antigens sustains and amplifies the immune response.

VACC-ZERA technology for vaccine development achieve a very high immune response and bring proven added value to the antigen.

Key Advantages

  • Therapeutic and Protective Vaccines.
  • Strong cellular and humoral immune response due to the high accumulation levels (Depot effect) and high stability (Slow release) of VACC-ZERA- antigen.
  • Intrinsic positive immunomodulatory effect.
  • Complete tumor regression in cancer models.
  • Complete virus clearance in virus models.
  • Prolonged shelf life of VACC-ZERA protects the antigen from proteolytic degradation without the need of cold chain.
  • Fast Design and Development.
  • Heterologous prime/boost strategy regimen by applying a combination of VACC-ZERA-DNA and VACC-ZERA-protein vaccines.

Current status

VACC-ZERA technology has been validated in several animal models in preclinical studies.

VACC-ZERA DNA Vaccines

VACC-ZERA DNA vaccines have demonstrated its effectiveness in challenging experiments either as prophylactic or as therapeutic vaccines:

LCMV - Preclinical

Fig. 1. Complete virus clearance of infected mouse animals pre-treated with a DNA VACC-ZERA-Ag vaccine (NP). The inoculation with a DNA vaccine coding for the Antigen (without VACC-ZERA) only produced a partial effect.

Prostate cancer - Preclinical

Fig. 2. Complete tumor regression in experiments performed in animal models inoculated with a therapeutic DNA VACC-ZERA-Ag vaccine.

Product Development

Zip Solutions is developing VACC-ZERA-PCA1302 vaccine, an immunotherapy against prostate cancer in preclinical stage of development. VACC-ZERA-PCA1302 is able to break self-tolerance and induces a complete tumor regression, through a sustained and amplified immune response.

Prostate cancer is the most common non-skin malignancy in men and is the second leading cause of cancer death in men. There are at least 50-100.000 patients to be treated from recurrent disease; each treatment cost €40-90K à the total market is between €3-7B per year.