
Tiba Biotech announced that it has been awarded an Easy Broad Agency Announcement R&D contract through the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) to develop therapeutics against influenza.
The nearly $750,000 contract, awarded through a competitive review process, supports early-stage therapeutic platform development for the Flexible and Strategic Therapeutics (FASTx) program of BARDA, which is aimed at advancing therapeutic platform technologies that can be deployed rapidly in response to viral outbreaks.
BARDA is part of the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
In a statement, Tiba said that its initial focus will be the development of a prototype RNAi-based therapeutic against H1N1 influenza that targets the highly conserved viral nucleoprotein and will be delivered via Tiba's RNABL platform.
The company noted that this initiative is an extension of its focus on therapeutics to combat influenza pandemic threats. Tiba's work in this arena includes a novel multiantigen mRNA-based H7N9 influenza vaccine funded under a phase II Small Business Innovation Research grant from the U.S. National Institutes of Health, as well as ongoing collaborations with the Collaborative Influenza Vaccine Innovation Centers. This project is being supported wholly with federal funds through BARDA under contract number 75A50124C00014.