Codagenix said that there are no approved vaccines or therapeutics available to address COVID-19 infection, whereas a live-attenuated vaccine would offer multiple advantages
Coronavirus infection causes mild to severe respiratory illness. (Credit: Pete Linforth/Pixabay.)
Clinical-stage biotechnology company Codagenix has joined forces with the Serum Institute of India to co-develop a live-attenuated vaccine against the recent coronavirus epidemic.
The recently out broke coronavirus infection is named COVID-19, which causes mild to severe respiratory illness with symptoms including cough and fever.
The company said that no approved vaccines or therapeutics are currently available to address COVID-19 infection, and a live-attenuated vaccine would offer multiple advantages.
Codagenix CEO said J Robert Coleman said: “We are honoured to form a collaboration with the Serum Institute, one of the world’s leading vaccine manufacturers. With the Serum Institute’s financial and technical support, we will be able to push a coronavirus vaccine into the clinic on an extremely rapid timeline.
“Live-attenuated vaccines like the ones developed by Codagenix are ideally suited to outbreak scenarios as they scale rapidly and generally require only modest amounts of active ingredient for each immunization, as compared to inactivated and subunit vaccines. We are proud to be confronting this public health crisis head-on.”
Codagenix has designed a vaccine for COVID-19 through effective genome sequencing
Under the collaboration, Codagenix will design a live-attenuated multiple nCoV vaccine candidate genome using its advanced viral deoptimisation technology and will test the vaccine viruses in suitable contracted laboratories before conducting the clinical trials.
The company said that its technology would support the production of multiple vaccine candidates in less time, using the digital sequence of the viral genome.
The Serum Institute of India is a vaccine manufacturer and distributor, which will scale-up the manufacturing of the developed vaccine, ensuring its availability will meet the public health need.
Serum Institute CEO Adar Poonwalla said: “We are very excited for this new partnership with Codagenix and we hope that we can establish a platform dealing with new infectious diseases and outbreaks beginning with the coronavirus epidemic.”