Whooping cough:

Michigan company will pay for research to treat whooping cough.

A company completed an agreement with the University of Texas to commercialize the school’s research developments related to treating whooping cough.

A Michigan-based biotech company has completed a technology licensing agreement with the University of Texas at Austin to commercialize the school’s research developments related to treating whooping cough.

Synthetic Biologics Inc. and a second company, Intrexon Corp., are working on a new therapy using monoclonal antibodies for treating pertussis — commonly known as whooping cough — which causes an estimated 294,000 deaths a year worldwide.

The two companies will use research discoveries of Jennifer Maynard, an assistant professor of chemical engineering at UT.

The companies said that a whooping cough vaccine introduced in the 1990s does not provide long-term protection. As a result, the illness is on the rise in this country.

The Michigan company has agreed to license ongoing research and pending patents tied to Maynard’s research on pertussis antibodies.

Maynard said in a statement that she was excited to be working with Synthetic Bio- logics on its proposed treatment, “with the potential to protect infants from this devastating disease and to treat adults who suffer from the disease later in life.”

According to a filing by Synthetic Biologics, the company will pay UT $50,000 a year for the next two years for use of its patented discoveries plus additional payments when its treatment passes regulatory milestones. It also will pay up to $947,000 over the next three years to support Maynard’s research. It will pay $303,287 for the first year’s research, with an option to continue payments for the following two years.

Jeffrey Riley, CEO of Syn- thetic Biologics, said that Maynard has been researching “specific pertussis toxin targets for more than five years.”

“Her experience should accelerate our development time lines,” he said. “A steady increase in outbreaks of pertussis has become a serious threat to some of the most vulnerable members of our society, especially infants, and to individuals who are unvaccinated or whose vaccine failed to provide lasting immunity. Across the nation this year, doctors have reported twice as many cases of pertussis as there were in 2011.”