Vical Advances RapidResponse(TM) DNA Vaccine Platform Under $6 Million Gran...( SAN DIEGO June 25 /- Vical Incorp...),Health

SAN DIEGO, June 25 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Vical Incorporated (Nasdaq: VICL) today announced that the company has successfully completed first-year milestones under a three-year, $6.0 million grant awarded in 2007, and is advancing with the development of a DNA vaccine manufacturing process with the potential to produce several million doses of vaccines in a matter of days.

The RapidResponse(TM) system is designed to allow extremely rapid and large-scale production of DNA vaccines with low capital requirements. It is ideally suited to enable an immediate response against emerging diseases affecting large populations, such as pandemic influenza or severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). The company is proceeding with the development of the RapidResponse(TM) platform under the second year of grant funding awarded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Separately, Vical has completed enrollment in its Phase 1 testing of the company's Vaxfectin(R)-formulated pandemic influenza DNA vaccines, and expects to release results by August 2008.

About the RapidResponse(TM) Platform

The RapidResponse(TM) DNA vaccine manufacturing platform is intended to significantly reduce the time required to develop, manufacture and deploy vaccines against emerging diseases during the early stages of an infectious outbreak. By using a cell-free manufacturing process, the company believes that the RapidResponse(TM) DNA platform can overcome the time, capacity and cost challenges of manufacturing conventional vaccines for diseases such as influenza, which use viruses grown in chicken eggs or via cell culture, requiring months of production time in large, dedicated
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