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NasVax Finalizes Share Purchase Agreement with Protea Vaccine Technologies

01 Dec 2008 - NasVax Ltd. announced that it has signed an agreement with Protea Vaccine Technologies Ltd (Protea) to purchase all of the company's shares.
 
Protea is developing an innovative next-generation vaccine against diseases caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae, based on widely conserved pneumococcal proteins. Pneumococcal vaccine is one of the two largest market segments in prophylactic vaccines. Sales of $2.5B for pneumococcal vaccines in 2007 are growing at an annual rate of >30%.
 
Erez Chimovits, CEO of NasVax, says: "This deal is a very significant step in our strategy. It enables us to become an integrated vaccine company that, in addition to having a proprietary technology for improving vaccines, would enter one of the most attractive fields in the world of prophylactic vaccines, and with the potential for combining NasVax’s innovative technology with that of Protea.”
 
Protea has grown within Meytav, in which NasVax also was established, on the basis of technology developed in the laboratories in Israel of Professor Yaffa Mizrachi-Nebenzahl, who is a member of the Children’s Infectious Disease Unit in the Microbiology & Immunology Departments in the Faculty of Health Sciences in Ben Gurion University, and Professor Ron Dagan, who is Head of the Children’s Infectious Disease Unit in Soroka University Hospital and who has a worldwide reputation in the fields of pediatric vaccines and pneumococcal infections.