The University of Wisconsin–Madison has announced that virologists from the university have partnered with vaccine companies FluGen and Bharat Biotech on development of an intranasal vaccine against unique vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 for the prevention of COVID-19.
FluGen, a UW spin off co-founded by faculty member Yoshihiro Kawaoka, will create the vaccine and conduct pre-clinical trials. Bharat will scale up the process, manufacture the vaccine, and conduct clinical trials, which are expected to begin by fall 2020. According to the announcement, Bharat has the capability to manufacture almost 300 million doses per year.
The new vaccine, called CoroFlu, will be a modification of FluGen’s intranasal flu vaccine candidate, M2SR. In February 2019, FluGen announced that a Phase 2 trial of M2SR demonstrated that the vaccine could protect against a highly mismatched influenza strain. To make a vaccine effective against COVID-19, gene sequences from SARS-CoV-2 will be inserted into M2SR.
UW’s Gabriele Neumann said, “We are going to modify M2SR by adding part of the coding region for the coronavirus spike protein that the virus uses to latch onto cells and begin infection. CoroFlu will also express the influenza virus hemagglutinin protein, which is the major influenza virus antigen, so we should get immune responses to both coronavirus and influenza.”
FluGen President and CEO Paul Radspinner explains that the key to M2SR is that it is missing a gene that would allow the virus to replicate more than once: “The single replication means the virus can enter the cell, but it can’t leave. So, in essence it tricks the body into thinking it’s infected with flu, which triggers a full immune response. But since it can’t replicate further, you don’t get sick.”
Bharat Head of Business Development Raches Ella commented, “The core mission of Bharat Biotech is to apply innovative technologies in addressing the healthcare concerns of the developing world and to provide them with affordable, high quality vaccines and therapeutics. Ninety percent of our vaccines are sold in lower middle-income countries with affordable pricing being core to our business model. We will fervently work toward the successful development of an efficacious COVID-19 vaccine.”
Read the UW-Madison press release.
