Icosavax, Inc.

Self-assembling nanoparticle design for VLP-based vaccines

Icosavax is a vaccine platform company spun out of the Institute for Protein design at the University of Washington in 2017. Leveraging the basic discoveries in protein design by Neil King, David Baker an others, the company has computationally designed self-assembling nanoparticles that displays 20 copies of a trimeric viral protein that induces potent neutralizing antibody responses. The company's first target indication is Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV), a common respiratory virus for which there is no vaccine. In healthy individuals, symptoms are usually mild, but in young children, especially premature babies, and elderly (older than 65 years old) adults, RSV can cause serious bronchiolitis and lead to hospitalization and death.