Judge schedules Hawaii Biotech auction for July 19

HONOLULU—Hawaii Biotech, Inc. (HBI), a privately held biotechnology company focused on the development of prophylactic vaccines for infectious diseases, has been scheduled to be sold at auction. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in December 2009.

A U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge scheduled the auction for July 19—bidders have until July 12 to submit their qualifications to the court.

CEO Elliot Parks says the company is funding its operations with a $2 million line of credit that is expected to be exhausted by the end of July, Associated Press reports.

The Honolulu company uses a proprietary protein production platform that has application to the manufacture of proteins for use as antigens in vaccines and diagnostic kits as well as research tools. HBI recently successfully completed a Phase 1 clinical trial of its West Nile vaccine in healthy human subjects. The company is currently in Phase 1 clinical studies with a monovalent dengue vaccine candidate and in pre-clinical development with a vaccine for tick-borne encephalitis. HBI’s product pipeline also includes vaccine candidates for malaria and influenza.

HBI announced in May that they were developing a tetravalent dengue virus sub-unit vaccine designed with high fidelity to all four of the native viral antigens, which it believes will provide balanced protective immunity to the recipients. The vaccine is nonreplicating, which HBI expects will result in a positive safety profile as compared to live-attenuated vaccines.

HBI is the oldest and largest biotechnology company in the islands.