MRSA
ST. PAUL, Minn. — Syntiron announced Dec. 16 that it has granted Sanofi Pasteur an exclusive worldwide license to its human vaccine against Staphylococcus aureus.
Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, is an important hospital-acquired infection that is a major cause of illness and death resulting in excess of 18,000 deaths and 500,000 hospitalizations in the United States each year.
MRSA is responsible for several difficult-to-treat infections in humans, because these bacteria are resistant to a large group of antibiotics, including penicillins.
Staph infections, including MRSA, occur most frequently among persons in hospitals and health care facilities who have weakened immune systems. MRSA infections that occur in otherwise healthy people who have not been hospitalized within the past year or had a medical procedure (such as dialysis, surgery, catheters) are known as community-associated MRSA infections. These infections are usually skin infections, such as abscesses, boils, and other pus-filled lesions.
Sanofi-Aventis will pay Syntiron an undisclosed initial licensing fee, milestone payments and royalty payments on future sales of the product.
Syntiron is a private biotech company located in St. Paul. Under the terms of the agreement, Sanofi Pasteur will support the joint, pre-clinical development of the product and be responsible for all future developments, regulatory approval and commercialization of the vaccine.
Neither company spelled out the terms, but Syntiron gets an upfront payment, research funding and is eligible for development, regulatory and commercial milestone payments that could reach $149 million in total. Syntiron also stands to earn royalties on sales of products commercialized under the license and collaboration.
Syntiron has received many grants from the National Institutes of Health for the development of vaccines to prevent infections by Yersinia, Salmonella and Staphylococcus bacteria. In November 2008, Syntiron was awarded a $4 million contract from the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency for early stage development of vaccines against three potential bacterial bioterrorism threats.