US law firm Covington & Burling has advised on the creation of a joint venture that will help to develop a vaccine that could become the first new vaccine licensed to prevent tuberculosis in 80 years.

Covington advised regular client Emergent BioSolutions on the venture with the University of Oxford to develop the MVA85A vaccine, which is thought to be the most clinically advanced of its kind.

A team from Covington's London office was lead by Lucinda Osborne, of counsel in the firm's European life sciences group.

The Oxford-Emergent Tuberculosis Consortium, through the university's technology transfer company, Isis, was advised by in-house counsel, Emma Wheatley.

Osborne commented: "Through this joint venture and related licensing and commercial arrangements, the parties will pool their resources and expertise to continue development of what we hope will prove to be a groundbreaking vaccine to prevent a disease which kills an estimated two million people each year.

"We were delighted to advise Emergent BioSolutions on this complex transaction which provides it with an extraordinary opportunity to address a major public health crisis."

Covington represented Emergent in June 2006 on a licence and co-development agreement which granted sanofi-aventis exclusive world-wide rights to Emergent's proteins and related technology for the development of a novel vaccine to protect against Neisseria meningitidis serogroup B bacterial infections, with Osborne leading the team.

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