Prokarium Limited

Cancer occurs when cells in the body accumulate genetic mutations that prompt them to grow uncontrollably, affecting normal body functions and potentially leading to death. Acquiring such mutations, and therefore developing a cancer, is more probable as we age. It is estimated that 1 in 2 people will experience cancer in their lifetime. Most standard canc...

Bladder Cancer (BC) affects more than 550,000 people globally every year. With the highest recurrence rate of any known cancer (80%), it is one of the most expensive for the NHS to treat, costing £65M pa (CRUK). Current immunotherapy treatments based on the weakened strain of _Mycobacterium bovis_ (BCG) present a significant challenge, with substantial im...

Cancer occurs when cells in the body accumulate genetic mutations that prompt them to grow uncontrollably, affecting normal body functions and potentially leading to death. Acquiring such mutations, and therefore developing a cancer, is more probable as we age. It is estimated that 1 in 2 people will experience cancer in their lifetime. Most standard canc...

Enteric fever is caused by two types of bacteria: Salmonella Typhi (typhoid) and Salmonella Paratyphi (paratyphoid), contracted from contaminated food or water. Although there are vaccines to prevent typhoid, there is no vaccine for paratyphoid which is a growing problem globally. With nearly 27 million global cases of enteric fever each year, Entervax™, ...

As recent disease outbreaks show, the world needs to be faster and better at developing, manufacturing, testing and distributing vaccines. Prokarium, a UK-based vaccine development company focusing on oral vaccines, can move from bench to clinic 6-12 months faster compared to most injectable vaccines, use the same manufacturing process to produce a wide r...

In February 2016 the WHO declared the Zika virus (ZIKV) to be a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern”. Experts now believe ZIKV is linked to a broad set of complications in pregnancy, including miscarriage, stillbirth, premature birth and eye problems with 29% of scans showing abnormalities in babies in the womb, including growth restrictions...

C. difficile infection (CDI) causes severe diarrhoea in hospital patients after treatment with broad-spectrumantibiotics. CDI can be successfully treated with specific antibiotics, but infection and diarrhoea re-occurs in upto 3 out of 10 patients and on average 2 of these will die. A vaccine could prevent CDI but none is currentlyavailable. The vaccines ...

New vaccines are made from proteins that have to be injected using a needle. The process of making these proteins is very expensive and different for each vaccine. They cannot be put into tablets because they would be digested in the gut, and they need to be refrigerated and transported around developing countries via a distribution network called the col...

Prokarium Ltd of Keele, Staffordshire, has invented Vaxonella, a synthetic biology platform that promises to eliminate the need for needles for many vaccines. This is not only convenient for UK travellers going abroad, but will be essential in preventing diseases in rural areas where people do not have access to medical professionals. Vaxonella is based o...