Malaria is a parasitic disease that affects about 300-500m people per year and is responsible for about 2.7m deaths. The disease is prevalent in the developing world - where many of the US Navy's personnel serve - and a low cost prevention or treatment for the disease is yet to be found.
The deal extension is the result of recent studies of CEL-1000 conducted at the Naval Medical Research Center (NMRC), that have demonstrated the drug's ability to stimulate a protective response against malaria, herpes simplex, viral encephalitis and cancer upon challenge in animals.
"It has been previously reported that CEL-1000 peptide induced immune responses giving 100 per cent protection against malaria (P. yoelii) infection in a mouse model after the administration of only two doses of CEL-1000 (5 microgram) at 2 to 4 weeks prior to challenge," said a statement issued by CEL-SCI.
"Even when administered as a single dose or at a dose as low as 1 microgram, significant protection was observed," said the company.
The drug is also showing promise in separate studies being run by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), for the prevention/treatment of the avian flu virus in animal models and the ability to enhance the activity of avian flu vaccines, thereby "stretching" the avian flu vaccine supply.
A small peptide, CEL-1000 is believed to increase an animal's ability to fight off challenges via the immune system arm responsible for interferon gamma.
Because it is a modified version of a human sequence known to bind to both human and mouse immune cells, the drug's promising results in animals are now expected to be replicated in humans.