The Tough Tech problem we are solving
Vaccines are one of the most effective tools in public health, yet their impact is often limited by logistical and biological challenges: the need for cold storage, trained medical personnel for administration, and multiple doses to achieve full efficacy. These constraints delay immunization efforts, increase costs, and leave vulnerable populations at risk. At the same time, there is a growing need for more responsive and equitable vaccine delivery systems that can meet the demands of emerging diseases and global health crises.
Meanwhile, the growing field of immunotherapy holds tremendous promise to treat cancer, but this too faces major hurdles: they can be expensive, require repeated infusions, and may struggle to generate a strong, sustained immune response. Many patients experience limited benefit because the body fails to maintain the immune activation needed to target and eliminate tumors over time. Additionally, delivering immunotherapies in a way that’s both potent and patient-friendly remains a significant challenge. There’s a pressing need for approaches that enhance the durability, precision, and accessibility of cancer immunotherapy — especially in early-stage or outpatient settings where simpler administration could dramatically broaden impact.
About our solution
Vaxess Technologies is pioneering a technique it calls Infection Mimicry to help increase the effectiveness of immunotherapies for infectious diseases and cancer. The company’s first product, named MIMIX, is inspired by the body’s natural immune response to infection. MIMIX is a smart-release therapeutic patch that, after only minutes of wear-time, can release treatments into the skin at precise rates for up to months after the initial application. The same biology that allows MIMIX to activate the immune system against infectious diseases like influenza can also be used to activate the immune system against cancer cells. When a MIMIX patch loaded with a chemo agent is applied to certain tumors, for example, it kickstarts a natural immune response, eventually eliminating metastases throughout the body.
The ability of MIMIX to reliably deliver controlled amounts of treatment over a precise amount of time is not only more convenient for the patient, it is often more efficacious. In the case of immunotherapies and vaccines, the sustained delivery provided by MIMIX allows the patient’s body to react in a manner similar to if its immune system was reacting to a natural infection—a slow, strong, and enduring ramp-up of immune response. Remarkably, in the first MIMIX flu vaccine mouse study, the patch led to immune responses to influenza strains not included in the vaccine. Such a response is never seen with a traditional flu vaccine.