Benzinga | Nov 30, 2020 09:01AM EST

GeoVax Announces License Agreement With NIH To 'Support Continued Advancements in Vaccine Development'

via NewMediaWire -- GeoVax Labs, Inc. (NasdaqCM: GOVX, GOVXW) ("GeoVax" or the "Company"), a biotechnology company developing human immunotherapies and vaccines against infectious diseases and cancer, today announced the signing of a Patent and Biological Materials License Agreement (the "License Agreement") with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), in support of GeoVax's non-clinical development of vaccines against numerous pathogens.

The License Agreement provides GeoVax with access to certain materials and patent rights owned by agencies of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for use in combination with the Company's proprietary technology for the creation of preventive and/or therapeutic vaccines against Ebola-Zaire, Ebola-Sudan, Lassa virus, Marburg virus, Zika virus and malaria. The agreement also extends to the Company's research and development efforts in certain oncology areas. The agreement provides GeoVax with nonexclusive rights for the nonclinical development and manufacturing of its vaccine and immunotherapy candidates using HHS patents and materials. Financial terms of the License Agreement were not disclosed.

David Dodd, GeoVax President and CEO, commented, "This research license agreement is important to GeoVax's ongoing vaccine and cancer immunotherapy developments as it provides us with the rights for continued use of the HHS patents and materials in our research and development programs. If we later decide to commercialize vaccine candidates that are subject to this license, we will negotiate appropriate commercialization licenses at that time, similar to that recently completed related to our COVID-19 vaccine program."