A New Approach to Conjugate Vaccines
Company Overview
TRIA Bioscience is a privately-held company focusing on the development of a new generation of conjugate vaccines. Scientists at TRIA are using a proprietary synthetic peptide to achieve robust immune responses to traditionally weak antigens. These vaccines are very simple in design, their targets are specific, and their reduced manufacturing costs are unmatched by current technologies.
Technology
Background
Conjugate vaccines are among the most successful vaccines developed to date with combined sales of nearly $10B per year. Current conjugate vaccines are very effective in preventing pneumonia and meningitis and induce antibodies to bacterial polysaccharides. This technology requires the chemical conjugation of weak antigens to a protein carrier to improve immunogenicity.
The Problem
Despite their success, conjugate vaccines are expensive to manufacture, and the protein carriers and conjugation reactions create problems that diminish vaccine activity. Unfortunately, new conjugate vaccines for infectious disease have not been approved, nor has this approach succeeded in treating diseases that use other weak antigens including carbohydrates, short peptides, and small molecule drugs.
Our Solution
TRIA Bioscience is pioneering a new approach to conjugate vaccines where traditional protein carriers are replaced with a much smaller synthetic peptide and antigens are attached using new proprietary methods. These vaccines are very simple in design and their manufacturing generates a cost-effective product unmatched by current technologies.

A New Conjugate Vaccine Carrier
- Synthetic peptide just 65 amino acids in length
- Two functional domains that activate B- (blue) and T-cells (green)
- Eliminates the complexities of traditional vaccine carriers
- Streamlines manufacturing and the regulatory approval process
Featured Publications

Optimization of a multivalent peptide vaccine for nicotine addiction
Published: 19 July 2019
We have been optimizing the design of a conjugate vaccine for nicotine addiction that employs a peptide-based hapten carrier. This peptide, which is produced by solid-phase protein synthesis, contains B cell and T cell epitope domains and eliminates the non-relevant... Read More >
Epitope targeting with self-assembled peptide vaccines
Published: 14 March 2019
Nanoparticle-based delivery systems are being used to simplify and accelerate new vaccine development. Previously, we described the solid-phase synthesis of a 61-amino acid conjugate vaccine carrier comprising a α-helical domain followed by two universal T cell epitopes...Read More >
Addiction
TRIA Bioscience has built a vaccine platform for treating drug addiction that includes nicotine. Smoking is the second leading cause of death in the world. An estimated 1.3 billion people use tobacco products and 50% of these users will die from a smoking related disease. This project is being funded by a $6.3M grant from the National Institute of Drug Abuse.
Animal Health
The second candidate is an animal health product that provides a safe more humane and economical alternative to surgical castration of food source livestock. Additional uses includes fertility and overpopulation control of domestic animals and wildlife.