Serendipity is the word Alan Joslyn uses to describe the meeting and eventual acquisition of a Gainesville-based biotech firm.
"It's not every day all of a sudden a private company falls in your lap that's working in COVID-19," Joslyn, CEO of Oragenics, said. "We thought, 'Wow, is this for real?'"
The pair met through their lawyer, based in Tampa, and in just two weeks a deal was made: Oragenics would acquire Noachis Terra Inc. and with it, a National Institute of Health license for its work on a coronavirus vaccine.
"They were a private company looking for, essentially, access to capital," Joslyn said. "We had cash and also a public listing on NYSE. The combination to finance the license [they received for their work] and our desire to expand our portfolio, it was a good match."
The company was acquired from Joseph Hernandez, the founder and sole shareholder of Noachis Terra for $1.9 million in cash and 9.2 million shares of Oragenics' stock. Noachis Terra had already acquired a National Institutes of Health license, which works as a patent of sorts and gives the nonexclusive right to make and use technology, which will be evaluated for its commercial potential.
"(The license) has the possibility of expansion into some of the other previous types of coronavirus, because of the technology," Joslyn said. "We thought, 'We're a biotech company and if we have to do more with vaccine and antibiotics, we will go in that direction.' That's why we now own a vaccine, so to speak."
"It's amazing people don't know biotech is in Tampa and now a vaccine from the NIH is coming out."
Coronavirus has a 3D structure with "spike proteins." Noachis Terra has licensed the gene sequence that makes the spike proteins and is currently being produced in the genome of Chinese hamster ovary cells. The protein will later be manufactured inside a large fermenter, which would grow the cells for collection and they would be placed in a vaccine.
Joslyn is hopeful it will be available for a Phase 1 study by the end of this year or early 2021. Phase 1 would begin to test the safety and antibody production within volunteers in trials.
While others have also entered the race to create a vaccine, Joslyn is unconcerned about getting there first — as far as he is concerned, the world will need variations.
"There's a lot of different technologies that are being developed and a wide disparity in cost," he said. "We're taking a traditional approach, which is a very low cost. Here in the U.S. we have a relatively rich health care system that can afford the more expensive technology. That's great, but if you go Africa, South America, or sub-Asia, where it may not have the same profit margins, it's my type of vaccine that will be more readily useful."
While Joslyn sung his praises for Gainesville, which is the home of the University of Florida and his alma mater, he was a bit more cautiously optimistic on the future of Tampa as a bustling biotech hub.
"Tampa is interesting," Joslyn said. "Big companies have moved in on the generic side and there's a lot of the administrative side, with HR, accounting. But they haven't brought an army of scientists into the Tampa area, yet I don't know why. Hopefully we're leading the way in a revolution. It's amazing people don't know biotech is in Tampa and now a vaccine from the NIH is coming out."
