Medicago USA receives DARPA endorsement

The US subsidiary of Quebec City-based Medicago Inc has received approval for potential funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The two organizations are completing the final terms and conditions of funding for Medicago USA's scalable manufacturing of plant-expressed virus-like particles (VLP) vaccines If successful, the project would be a major breakthrough for the firm, which has little revenue and an R&D burn rate of about $12 million annually. Medicago USA's proposed development of a large. cost-effective and rapid scale-up of its VLP vaccines is an alternative to the traditional method of vaccine production. The technology could deliver a vaccine for testing in about one month after identification and reception of genetic sequences from a pandemic strain, meaning a population could be vaccinated before the first wave of a pandemic strikes....