‘A bouquet to immune system’: The UQ tech helping Dr Manu Hanon and Vicebio beat the next pandemic

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, new viral threats are considered an inevitability – particularly as our climate changes and, with it, human behaviour and demographics.

For Emmanuel Hanon this means we need new ways to keep people healthy, and fast.

Enter the molecular clamp: The University of Queensland vaccine technology licensed to Dr Hanon’s company Vicebio, and potentially the next big defence against viral respiratory threats.

“It's critical to have expertise across the world, including in Australia, to maximise our chance of defeating the next pandemic or the next threat,” he says.

“New vaccines will be critical for this, and we must continue to invest in these efforts, and in the people who have a whole understanding of microbes and pathogens and who can identify strategies to fight against them.

“That is what Vicebio is moving towards – and researchers at the University of Queensland will be crucial to this.”

Emmanuel – or ‘Manu’ to his friends and colleagues - is Vicebio’s chief executive officer, having joined the company in 2021.

ViceBio was founded to develop the patented molecular clamp technology invented by Professor Paul Young, Professor Daniel Watterson, and the AIBN’s Professor Keith Chappell and exclusively licensed to Vicebio by UniQuest, the commercialisation company of UQ. 

The technology works by "clamping” viral proteins into a shape to stimulate an improved immune response in vaccines made from the resulting synthetic antigen.

Having recently initiated a Phase I clinical trial with a candidate targeting both respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and the human metapneumovirus (hMPV), Vicebio in September 2024 secured a $100 million Series B financing to accelerate development of a second a trivalent vaccine targeting RSV, hMPV and Parainfluenza Virus 3 (PIV3).

Manu says he is confident vaccines made with the molecular clamp will be able to help communities around the world respond quickly when these kinds of dangers emerge.

“Obviously we want a vaccine that is highly effective, achieving what we call the broadest coverage possible,” he says.

“So the goal is to protecting people against multiple viruses that can harm them.”

Read on to learn how Manu came to team up with UQ and how the lab of Professor Keith Chappell is helping Vicebio and tackle one of the most pressing medical issues of our time. 

Manu, you’re a former vet who is leading a global vaccine startup. How did you find yourself here?

Manu Hanon: I suppose first and foremost, I am a scientist. And I have a passion transforming scientific ideas into ‘real stuff’. Ideally stuff that is going to serve society.

Thankfully, for the past 25 years I’ve had the chance to exert my passion by making vaccines. After my studies as a vet I built up my scientific knowledge with further academic research and through working with pharmaceutical companies.

But the Vicebio story is really one of opportunity and meeting the right people at the right time.

I certainly didn’t start the company. My adventure began when I saw Professor Keith Chappell talk about his molecular clamp.

What was it about the molecular clamp that caught your eye?  

MH: Well I was still at my previous pharmaceutical company at the time, and we were told someone would be delivering a seminar about technology that could stabilise, or help improve the quality of antigens - the active ingredient we put in vaccines.

That was Professor Keith Chappell, Professor Trent Munro, and Professor Paul Young, and the technology they were presenting was the molecular clamp.

They showed us how their clamp technology allows them to synthesise viral surface proteins while "clamping" them into a shape that easier for the immune system to recognise as an antigen that will elicit an optimal immune response.

It’s basically presenting viral surface proteins to our immune system in an attractive way, kind of like giving someone a bouquet of flowers. 

The benefit of this technology is that the synthetic antigens that are engineered can then be purified and rapidly manufactured into a vaccine that can benefit a lot of people very quickly.

Were you sold on the clamp technology from the start? 

MH: Initially I wasn't really believing that that could be possible! But after Keith Chappell’s presentation soon it really resonated with me as an attractive technology, even though no official partnership would be made between my company and the UQ team.

A few years down the road, after I had left that company, I again crossed paths with Keith and his team and I was asked whether I was interested in participating in the Vicebio adventure.

It's always an adventure, working on the new technology, trying to introduce a new concept.

And I was super impressed, super honoured and interested to at least investigate more.

And so that's the way it started. Vicebio was created out of a partnership between UniQuest and Keith’s lab. And in 2021 I became their scientific advisor.

What is Vicebio ultimately working towards?

MH: I would say the goal of our company is to evaluate how UQ’s molecular clamp technology can be used to make better, multi-pathogen vaccines.

I am talking about vaccines that could improve our defence against multiple viruses that cause very severe disease, diseases that can send you to hospital, or kill you, or make people lose a lot of freedom because they attack the respiratory tract.

These are vaccines that could also be key in preventing the over-use of antibiotics, halting another major issue in medical science.

What we are trying to do with the technology is bring different antigen together in a single syringe so we can produce them at a very large volume at a very low cost.

This is very important if you want to vaccinate a lot of people and make your vaccine accessible to everybody.

How has working with Keith’s lab at the AIBN - and with UniQuest - enabled Vicebio to progress its work?

MH: In my past life working in big pharma we were managing hundreds of partnerships across research and development. So I have a very good understanding of what makes a quality partnership.

Even before I came on board at Vicebio, it was clear the existing partnership the company had with the University of Queensland was a quality one. And I want to insist that key to this partnership is UniQuest, which is really the tech transfer entity of UQ that plays this critical role of translating an innovation into a commercial opportunity.

So I would say UniQuest and Keith’s lab at the AIBN are really making sure Vicebio can proceed and progress towards this ultimate objective of making sure this vaccine technology will one day become something used to benefit people.

To make vaccines you need a critical mass of people that have the right level of expertise. It is a super highly disciplinary effort.

You need the scientist that that knows all to design this antigen. You need another expert that knows how to test whether that antigen has the right property. You need a third expert that knows how to produce that antigen at large scale and guarantee that you will produce it always the same way. You need another expert that knows or to test this quantity vaccine in human and measure whether it's going to deliver the promising response.

You need the scientific knowledge. You need the experience of having done the work. You need the willingness to do the work, and the risk appetite. That's a bloody high number of experts.

But I see all of this here at the AIBN and in Professor Keith Chappell’s group. It is not something I've seen in many places.

How is the AIBN ecosystem conducive for start-up culture and what are some of the advantages in a startup company engaging in a research partnership with the AIBN?

MH: The big difference between a big pharma company versus a small startup that just has been created is the pace at which development happens.

And it's not that large companies are against innovation or disruptive methods. The history and regulations they are bound by can make things incredibly slow and frustrating for scientists.

In research and development, time is of the essence. Successful companies must be super creative and able to identify innovations that can make a difference. But they also need to be super agile and super-fast.

And that is where it is crucial to have experts and infrastructure to enable this initial step of translating ideas into a promising product that is ready to be presented. That is what the AIBN offers startup companies.  

The level of trust that exists between the lab of Keith Chappell and Vicebio is really what allows us to go extremely fast.

What has also impressed me about the AIBN and The University of Queensland is the spirit of entrepreneurship.

When the pandemic started, you would not find a lot of academic institutes that stood up and said, we are going to make a vaccine, because we think we have a technology that could play a role.

The applied innovation you see at the AIBN is happening on a daily basis. You see it in the mindset of Keith Chappell and his group. People aren’t just working here to discover things. There is clearly an interest in making sure that the things they discover will serve for society.

What have the last 12 months looked like for Vicebio? 

MH: Absolutely. We’re very happy to have begun a first phase 1 clinical trial with a bivalent vaccine – a vaccine that combines two pathogens.

But we are not waiting. We are not sleeping on it. We are starting already to prepare a second phase 1 trial where we will test a prevalent vaccine that will regroup the three viruses for which we believe we absolutely need to be able to raise protection.

And if this second phase one is successful, we will enter into what we call late-stage development, which is really the stage where you begin to generate all the data you need to create a file that you will submit to the authorities to get an approval.

So we are super excited by that, especially that recently, we could secure what we call a series B funding of $US100 million to deliver these activities. So we have the technology, we have the motivation, we have the vaccine, and we have the fuel to advance.

Where do you hope to see Vicebio five years from now?

MH: In the next five years I hope that Vicebio will have delivered a vaccine that is being used and is saving lives. That would mean the technology has been proven to be able to deliver life-saving vaccines.

I hope we will not face another pandemic. But if another pandemic does start, Vicebio will absolutely be in a position to contribute.