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A start-up called Nasovak co-founded by Jiayan Liu, a PhD student in the Department of Microbiology, has won the Bronze Prize in the start-up group at the 2020 Qianhai Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao-Taiwan Youth Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition.

Nasovak is a preclinical stage biotech start-up developing next generation cancer vaccines to address highly unmet medical needs, with a mission of eradicating virus-associated cancers. Their core technology is a proprietary nasal spray vaccine platform technology developed by the research group of Professor Hong Lin Chen, Jiayan’s supervisor at HKU. 

Cancer is causing an increasing global disease burden, yet up to 20% of cancer cases can be prevented by vaccination as they are linked with viral infections. Preventing these viral infections can reduce the incidence of virus-associated cancers and save lives, as demonstrated by HPV vaccines in the prevention of cervical cancer. Another cancer-causing virus, the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), infects more than 95% of the global adult population. While most infected individuals are asymptomatic, EBV infection is linked with an increased risk of deadly cancers and disabling autoimmune diseases. Annual worldwide healthcare costs of EBV-linked complications were estimated to exceed US$ 1.5 billion in 2019. Currently, there is no approved vaccine against EBV on the market. A vaccine that can prevent or reduce EBV infection is expected to be quickly adopted by clinical communities globally following market approval.

Nasovak aims to create a novel prophylactic vaccine against EBV, with an objective of preventing EBV infection and EBV infection associated diseases, such as nasopharyngeal cancer, other cancers, and autoimmune diseases. The vaccine’s target users are seronegative children, who have not yet been exposed to EBV.