On January 13, 2021, AuraVax Therapeutics Inc., a biotech company developing novel vaccines and therapies to help patients defeat debilitating diseases, including COVID-19, announced it has entered into an exclusive license agreement with Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) covering certain intellectual property and technology rights regarding compositions and discoveries of liposomal STING agonists led by Mei X. Wu, Ph.D., of the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at MGH. Research related to this technology was published in Science in February 2020.

"We are delighted to be collaborating with MGH and Dr. Wu, who has developed a safe and potent adjuvant that can be intranasally delivered to augment the effectiveness of influenza vaccines. The intellectual property expands our portfolio to broadly target respiratory diseases from both a vaccine and therapeutic perspective. We plan to stop COVID-19, a respiratory virus, at its point of entry—the nasal cavity—as well as provide systemic protection. Our differentiated platform is based on STING agonists that we believe will lead to a vaccine with rapid protection and create sustained immunity to viral infections," said Dr. Navin Varadarajan, AuraVax co-founder and M.D. Anderson Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Houston. 

Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati is representing AuraVax in business advisory, licensing, and corporate matters related to the transaction.

For more information, please see AuraVax’s press release.