GEOVAX VIVALIS Media Contact: Melanie Nimrodi Media Contact: Steve Grobet/Emmanuel Huynh 1 312.546.3508 33 (0) 1 44 71 94 91 mnimrodi@frbir.com vivalis@newcap.fr Company Contact: Company Contact: Robert McNally / Jennife

GeoVax Partners with VIVALIS for Use of its Revolutionary EBx Technology to

Manufacture its MVA HIV/AIDS Vaccine

Partnership creates worldwide strategic collaboration between Vivalis and GeoVax

ATLANTA (GA USA) NANTES (France) July 22, 2008 GeoVax Labs, Inc. (OTC BB: GOVX), an

Atlanta based, biopharmaceutical company developing human vaccines for diseases caused by HIV-1

(Human Immunodeficiency Virus) and other infectious agents, together with VIVALIS (NYSE Euronext

:VLS), a French biopharmaceutical company that provides innovative cell-based solutions to the

pharmaceutical industry for the manufacture of vaccines and proteins, announced today the signing

of a letter of intent (LOI) for joint collaboration and commercial license on the use of Vivalis

EBx technology, to manufacture the MVA component of the GeoVax HIV-1 vaccine.

This agreement between GeoVax and Vivalis creates a worldwide strategic partnership between Vivalis

and GeoVax, designed to combine Vivalis cutting-edge vaccine manufacturing technology with

GeoVax s promising HIV vaccine.

The breakthrough manufacturing technology developed by Vivalis, and now to be further developed

through collaboration with GeoVax, will create a new standard for manufacture of the MVA component

of the GeoVax HIV/AIDS vaccine, making present manufacturing technologies which have limited

production capabilities, less competitive. Vivalis EBx manufacturing platform, with

its increased effectiveness, superior quality and reliability, will speed time to market MVA

vaccine product availability in ample quantities to meet sizeable demand and expectedly at a lesser

Partnering with Vivalis and its cutting-edge technology is extremely significant, and a giant step

forward for efficient manufacturing of our MVA HIV/AIDS vaccine component, stated Robert

McNally, President and CEO, GeoVax.

VIVALIS is pleased to enter in this collaboration with GeoVax, one of the most advanced companies

worldwide in the field of HIV vaccine development. This agreement aims at developing a VIVALIS

proprietary upstream-downstream process for the production of MVA vaccines and EBx

technology licensing. GeoVax becomes a strategic partner and joins an elite worldwide consortium in

the field of development, purification and production of MVA based vaccines, said Franck Grimaud,

The EB66 cell line is becoming a new standard for the production of vaccines, leading

to Vivalis having signed more than 20 licenses prior to December 2007 and four licenses in 2008:

two research and two commercial.

Vivalis vaccine manufacturing technology is based on a duck embryonic stem cell substrate

platform. The EB66 cell line provides continuous growth from a fully characterized

frozen cell bank, without necessitating fertilized embryo extraction and processing, as with

present chicken cell based technologies. Furthermore, the EB66 cell line can be grown

in suspension (without the cells attached to the surface of the growth vessel) and

for growth in giant bioreactors (a cutting edge industrial method) for large scale production of

the MVA viral vaccine.

Last month, Vivalis announced the filing of the BMF (Biologics Master File) for the

EB66 cell line with the US FDA (Food and Drug Administration). Extensive testing

reveals the unique and innovative nature of Vivalis EBx technology for the production

of vaccines and proteins. Today, the EB66 cell line is the only available

cell line in the market to be immortal and diploid.

When we learned about the work of Vivalis with EBx cell lines that might be able to be

used to grow MVA, we contacted Vivalis and arranged with them to jointly conduct pilot studies on

the growth of our MVA vaccine, said Harriet Robinson, Senior Vice President of Research and

Development, GeoVax. Our early production results have been very promising and have led to this

LOI for more formal development of the Vivalis EB66 cell line for the production of our

The GeoVax vaccine is a DNA/MVA vaccine that uses recombinant DNA to prime the immune response and

then a recombinant MVA virus to boost the immune response. MVA stands for Modified Vaccinia Ankara,

a smallpox viral vaccine that was attenuated (made more safe) by replicating the vaccine virus over

500 times in chicken cells. This long series of replications resulted in a derivative of the

smallpox vaccine virus which could grow in chicken cells but that had limited ability to grow in

human cells. The poor ability to grow on human cells has made MVA a very safe vaccine vector for

humans. However, it also limited the ability to manufacture MVA in the industrial cell lines that

have been approved for vaccine production. Rather, MVA had to be grown in chicken cells which rely

on harvesting cells from thousands of chicken embryos and using these cells which are grown in

multiple small vessels for vaccine manufacture. This process can be done for clinical and

commercial production, but is cumbersome, fraught by the introduction of contaminants and

expensive. The Vivalis EBx manufacturing technology eliminates such difficulties and

enables rapid large scale production in bioreactors for GeoVax s future commercial needs.

Financial terms of the agreement have not been disclosed. However, each side shall fund its roles

respectively, depending on developmental or process responsibilities assumed by each party. An

upfront amount payable to Vivalis will be provided as consideration for the signing of the LOI.

GeoVax s development and license payments shall be made based on milestone achievements. Royalties

on GeoVax net sales are also included. In addition, applications have been filed for EU and local

government financial participation. GeoVax is also seeking FDA guidance on the Vivalis

EBx manufacturing program recently submitted to the USA FDA allowing usage of

EB66 produced MVA vaccine for GeoVax s ongoing human trials.

Earlier this month, GeoVax also announced an operational update on the company s progress towards

entering Phase 2 preventative human clinical trial testing and plans to proceed into therapeutic

human trials with its AIDS vaccine. The Company s Phase 2 trial, to be conducted by the U.S.

National Institutes of Health (NIH) and supported HIV Vaccine Trials Network (HVTN), will involve

225 healthy volunteers from the United States and South America, and will further evaluate the

safety and immunogenicity of the GeoVax preventative vaccine (vaccine administered prior to

infection with the AIDS virus). The GeoVax DNA/MVA vaccine uses a different viral vector (MVA) than

the Merck vaccine and the NIH Vaccine Research Center vaccines, which use adenovirus5 (Ad5)

vectors. The Merck vaccine was withdrawn from trials in September 2007 because of failure to

protect. The NIH has just announced that their vaccine will not be progressing in large scale

trials because of the Merck results. Thus two major competitors for GeoVax are no longer

progressing in trials.

About GeoVax Labs, Inc.

GeoVax Labs, Inc. is a biotechnology company, established to develop, manufacture, license and

commercialize human vaccines for diseases caused by HIV-1 (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) and other

infectious agents. GeoVax s HIV/AIDS vaccine technology is the subject of 20 issued or filed patent

applications. GeoVax HIV/AIDS vaccines are designed for use in uninfected people to prevent

Acquired Immunodeficiency Disease (AIDS), caused by the virus known as HIV-1, should the person

ever become infected. GeoVax HIV/AIDS

vaccines also may be effective as therapeutics (treatment of

people already infected with AIDS virus). Studies evaluating these vaccines in HIV/AIDS infected

individuals are in the planning stage.

GeoVax s core HIV/AIDS vaccine technologies were developed through a collaboration of colleagues at

Emory University s Vaccine Center, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), The Centers for Disease

Control and Prevention (CDC) and the GeoVax team.

GeoVax HIV/AIDS vaccines have moved forward in human clinical trials conducted by the HIV Vaccine

Trials Network (HVTN) based in Seattle, Washington. The HVTN, funded through a cooperative

agreement with the National Institutes of Health NIH), is the largest worldwide clinical trials

program dedicated to the development and testing of HIV/AIDS vaccines. Preclinical work enabling

evaluation of GeoVax DNA and MVA vaccines was funded and supported by NIAID, which provided

additional support to GeoVax AIDS vaccine development program with a $15 million IPCAVD grant