AlphaVax Inc.

For well over a decade, researchers at the University of North Carolina (UNC) virology labs and the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) have worked on a vaccine for Venezuelan equine encephalitis, a tropical microbe that infects horses and that mosquitoes can carry to humans. During the course of that research, scientists from both institutions noticed that the VEE virus possessed biological features and properties that suggested it could be used as a vaccine vector. Those findings eventually led to the vaccine delivery technology that AlphaVax Inc. plans to commercialize.

With approximately $30 million in research grant funding behind them, including $12.4 million just awarded by the National Institutes of...