Okairos is a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company spun off from Merck. Inc., and developing genetic vaccines for major chronic infectious diseases and for cancer, using novel proprietary technology. The company's laboratories are located in Rome and Naples, Italy, with corporate headquarters in Basel, Switzerland.

Okairos's proprietary technology is centered on the development of new adenovirus vectors derived from strains isolated from chimpanzees and used to encode and deliver prophylactic and therapeutic antigens. Okairos's adenovirus vectors have three major advantages:

1. Immunological potency, with adenovirus vectors inducing a stronger T-cell-mediated immune response than any currently existing vaccines
2. Efficient growth in FDA-approved cell lines
3. Lack of pre-existing neutralizing antibodies against the vectors in humans

Okairos's new vectors elicit the strong immune response already seen for Adeno5 but overcome the significant limitation of that vector, namely the high rate of pre-existing immunity that substantially lessens its efficacy. Okairos's technology provides it with a platform that can be used to generate vaccines against a wide range of infectious diseases and cancer for which there are currently no adequate vaccines.

Web: www.okairos.it/e/index.php