PopVax Gains $1.15M From Gates Foundation For Thermostable mRNA Delivery

PopVax, an Indian biotech firm, has secured $1.15 million from the Gates Foundation to advance thermostable mRNA vaccine delivery formulations.

- TBG NETWORK

PopVax, an Indian full-stack biotechnology company developing novel mRNA vaccines and therapeutics using computational protein design, is pleased to announce that its ongoing research effort to develop lipid-polymer delivery formulations for thermostable mRNA vaccines has been funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation under a 1.15 million USD project agreement signed in October 2023. This effort follows on from a prior 2021 project agreement under which PopVax was awarded 100,000 USD to support the company's earliest exploratory work on mRNA platform development and thermostable mRNA delivery formulations. These formulations are composed of novel lipids and polymers designed by PopVax. In September 2024, PopVax initiated the first animal study to determine the efficacy of a formulation from this project. The Principal Investigator for this project is Dr. Maunish Barvalia, PopVax's Vice President of Platform Technologies, who previously worked with pioneering nucleic acid delivery research groups at NanoVation Therapeutics and during his PhD at the University of British Columbia in Canada. "We at