When Tiba Biotech was included in the cancellation of $500 million worth of grants funding mRNA vaccine development, the company was shocked. That’s because Tiba’s project doesn’t use mRNA and is not a vaccine.
The unexpected cancellation comes as Massachusetts-based Tiba was nearing the end of the project, which was awarded $749,999 in federal funding from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) on July 11, 2024.
“The BARDA contract is to develop a lung-targeted treatment for influenza infection using RNA interference (RNAi), a therapeutic modality that has been successful in the clinic since the first FDA-approved RNAi product in 2018,” Tiba said in a statement to Fierce Biotech. “Tiba's project has been successful in its aims so far and was near completion, with only three months remaining in the contracted work plan.”
Despite this, the company said it received a stop-work order on Aug. 5, the same day the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced a sweeping plan to end all BARDA projects that involve mRNA vaccines.
Despite Tiba being directly mentioned as an impacted company in the federal release, the biotech said the stop-work message from the HHS did not mention the BARDA mRNA vaccine wind-down and that Tiba is complying with the order. Even with the loss of BARDA funds, Tiba plans to continue working on the project.
"The company goals are to advance our RNAi therapeutic forward after the BARDA contract termination," a Tiba spokesperson told Fierce. "We are performing internal development and pursuing commercial partnerships to support the continued funding of this program."
As of publication, the HHS had not responded to a request for comment from Fierce Biotech.
Tiba's technique packages siRNA into inhaled nanoparticles that can travel directly to the lungs to disrupt the virus's ability to replicate. Tiba's funding came from BARDA's Flexible and Strategic Therapeutics (FASTx) program, which is meant to support early-stage platform development for antiviral therapies. The goal of the program is to fund novel technologies that can be rapidly used to make drugs targeting newly emerged flu strains.
In the HHS announcement, Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said mRNA vaccine development was specifically being targeted. MRNA occurs in every living cell as the intermediary between the DNA in genes and proteins. Each individual mRNA molecule is short-lived, serving as a template for the creation of proteins.
RNAi instead uses two different kinds of RNA molecules, microRNA (miRNA) and small interfering RNA (siRNA), which help regulate gene expression in cells.
Separate from the BARDA project, Tiba has received funding in the past from the National Institutes of Health for mRNA vaccines targeting the flu and tick-borne diseases. But the company's most recent vaccine success was in animals, not humans. The day before the HHS announcement, Tiba revealed that one of the company’s mRNA vaccines had fully protected cattle from foot-and-mouth disease.
Editor's note: This story was updated at 2:50 p.m. ET to include additional information on Tiba's plans for the affected project. If your company's funding was affected by the cancellation of BARDA mRNA vaccine projects, please reach out to Darren Incorvaia (dincorvaia@questex.com) or Gabrielle Masson (gmasson@questex.com).