Mass High Tech - June 3, 2009

NIH awards Ancora $530K for malaria vaccine
Mass High Tech

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded a $530,000 Phase 1 Small Business Innovation Research grant to Medford-based Ancora Pharmaceuticals Inc. to research a vaccine to prevent malaria anemia.

The biopharmaceutical company said it’s the third such NIH grant Ancora has received. In 2005, Ancora won a $3.3 million grant from NIH to develop its cerebral malaria vaccine candidate. This latest NIH award comes just after the company assembled pre-clinical results showing its carbohydrate-based vaccine can treat cerebral malaria, which causes brain inflammation.

According to Ancora, severe malarial disease results from the downstream effects of a toxin from the malaria parasite. Malaria affects up to 10 percent of the globe and causes between two and three million deaths per year. Global warming, according to the World Health Organization, will put about half the worldwide population in jeopardy of the disease by 2010.

Ancora is a private venture-backed company attempting to create low cost vaccines using carbohydrate synthesis. Its production of synthetic carbohydrates allows it to formulate treatments for bacterial, parasitic and viral infectious diseases. In 2007, the firm quietly closed a $2.2 million Series B round to further develop its carbohydrates synthesis process, according to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission documents, and the company’s president.