CSU’s biopharma center awarded $4.6M contract to create vaccine

FORT COLLINS — Colorado State University has been awarded a 10-month, $4.6 million contract to help develop and manufacture new vaccines to fight encephalitic viruses that cause inflammation of the brain.
The contract, funded by the Department of Defense, is an extension of the successful work already performed on Ebola and Marburg vaccines at CSU’s Biopharmaceutical Manufacturing and Academic Resource Center.

The new funding will be used to develop vaccines for Western, Eastern and Venezuelan equine encephalitis viruses. The mosquito-borne viruses can cause severe long-term disease and possibly death in humans.

The vaccines are intended to protect soldiers from aerosolized exposure to the viruses and could be used for endemic outbreaks.

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There are no licensed U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved human vaccines or therapeutics to protect against or treat such viral infections.

BioMARC is a nonprofit contract manufacturer and a high-containment biopharmaceutical unit launched by CSU in 2006. It has been successfully meeting milestones set last year by the DOD for the Ebola and Marburg vaccines.

BioMARC has approximately 30 full-time employees and about 12 CSU students who will be working at the facility.