The patent covers several effective methods for decorating cells or bacterial vesicles (OMVs) with different particles. It represents an important patent that, together with previously approved patents for the BERA platform technology, strengthens the protection of Abera’s leading pneumococcal vaccine candidate and other candidates in the pipeline, it states.

“We are pleased to have this patent approved by EPO. The patent protects several improvements to our BERA technology platform and provides broad and robust protection for our plug-and-play solution to decorate OMVs. The technology is based on a system of ‘protein tags’ placed on both OMVs and antigens, which bound to each other when mixed. With this technology, we can produce OMVs separately and then quickly and easily attach different disease-specific antigens to the OMVs to develop new vaccine candidates. This patent provides extended IP protection of at least 6 years for our vaccine candidates based on OMV technology, such as our nasal vaccine against pneumococcal infections,” says Maria Alriksson, CEO of Abera Bioscience.

The company’s vaccine candidates are based on technology platforms that enable the decoration of bacterial cells or vesicles (so-called OMVs) with proteins, such as antigens, thereby allowing the design of new vaccines. OMVs function as carriers into the body and enhance the effect of the disease-specific antigens attached to the vector.

The patent has previously been granted in the US.