Brucellosis is a global problem but most severely affects poor livestock keepers in the developing world because of its impacts on human and animal health and livelihoods.

Brucella Green Vac is developing BGV1, the first vaccine in over 60 years against Brucella melitensis in small ruminants that overcomes the main drawbacks of Rev-1, the only one available up to date. The new vaccine is designed to be avirulent for animals, eliminate interference with diagnostic tests after vaccination, have low potential transmissibility to humans and lastly, be treatable with standard antibiotics. BGV1 is a strong candidate to replace the classic unsafe vaccine.

Great Interest and Successful Funding
All this calls for funding to speed up the development of BGV1 and bring the new vaccine into the market. Therefore, Brucella Green Vac contacted Nordic Innovators to receive counselling and help to present funding applications for EU programmes. We successfully collaborated on two projects, SME Instrument Phase 1 and EU’s new programme Accelerator and received grants from both programmes.

Receiving the funding will help allow, for the first time, mass vaccination of any animal at any time. This is a radical paradigm shift in Brucellosis control and eradication. The reduction of outbreaks and infection rate in animals will generate €3.81bn in cumulative economic benefits for users by 2028 by evading unnecessary diagnostics costs and losses caused by the infection.

“The great interest has boosted expectations and given our scientific team confidence to continue the hard work of bringing the vaccine into the market”, says Ignacio Grilló, Director. “The fact that this disease ranks consistently among the top sanitary problems in the world, and that we have the possibility to contribute a solution for so many people and animals in developing countries, gives us extra motivation.”

The Difference the Funding Makes
"Recently, we have had the pleasure of obtaining financing of just over 2 million euros on the first call for the EIC Accelerator Pilot - Horizon Europe programme. It has been a great experience since a total of 1700 applications were submitted of which only 5 Spanish proposals have been funded. After signing the Grant Agreement with the European Commission, we were able to open the new office at the CEIN facilities in Pamplona hiring 4 researchers (2 PhDs and 2 predoctorals), with 2 other contracts in progress. The main objective of the project is to carry out the production of our new generation BGV1 vaccine and complete the efficacy tests against virulent infection by Brucella melitensis in sheep, which, together with the safety results obtained, will allow us to access the prize for Phase 2 of the competition promoted by the World Bank through AGResults, of great international impact. This competition awards prizes of up to 30 million dollars, which highlights the importance of finding new vaccines against animal brucellosis that solve the many and important drawbacks of classical vaccines. This is a necessary measure to combat this zoonosis, with a very high prevalence in the developing continents, being one of the health problems with the greatest economic impact on the planet."

"We greatly appreciate the support received by the Nordic Innovators’ consulting team. They have been quick to capture our own very specific needs from the start and come up with a very high-quality proposal for the European Commission." 
Ignacio Grilló, Director