Codagenix-Serum Join Fray To Develop SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine
Executive Summary
Codagenix, a company backed by Novartis, Merck and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has tied up with India’s Serum Institute to develop a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, joining a heated race against the dreaded COVID-19 outbreak.
As companies around the world scramble to develop a vaccine against the new strain of coronavirus, now known as SARS-CoV-2, Codagenix Inc. Inc., a US-based clinical-stage biotechnology company, along with partner Serum Institute of India Ltd., is throwing its hat in the ring.
Codagenix develops prophylactic vaccines and oncolytic virus therapies while India-based Serum is the world's largest vaccine manufacturer by number of doses produced and sold (over 1.5 billion).
Adjuvant Capital, a life sciences fund backed by investors including International Finance Corporation, Novartis AG, Merck & Co. Inc. and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, recently led a $20m funding round in Codagenix. (Also see "Venture Funding Deals: Generation Bio Raises $110m For Non-Viral Gene Therapies" - Scrip, 7 Feb, 2020.)
The company has already designed multiple SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidate genomes using its proprietary deoptimization technology. Software is used to recode genomes of viruses, constructing live-attenuated vaccines or viruses, which allow for rapid generation of multiple vaccine candidates starting with only the digital sequence of the viral genome.
Various vaccines for dengue fever, flu, swine flu, respiratory syncytial virus and foot and mouth disease are in development at Codagenix.
Deal With Serum
It has now partnered with Serum to co-develop a live-attenuated vaccine against the emergent coronavirus. The vaccine viruses will be grown and tested in vivo by contracted laboratories suitable for containment, prior to testing in clinical trials. Serum will then scale-up manufacture of the vaccine.
The partners are pursuing an accelerated development pathway with built-in redundancies to increase speed and likelihood of success, said Codagenix.
Adar Poonawalla, CEO of Serum Institute, 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."
"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," said J. Robert Coleman, CEO of Codagenix.
Founded as a spin-out from Stony Brook University in New York in 2012, Codagenix had earlier received backing from government institutions like the National Institute of Health, the Department of Agriculture and the US Army.
Other Companies In The Fray
As the death toll rises in China and new cases emerge in other countries, researchers are aiming to slash development times to generate a vaccine against the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus.
On 23 January, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), announced the initiation of three programs to develop vaccines, with the aim of advancing candidates into testing and available as quickly as possible - which it believes could be just 16 weeks. (Also see "Moderna, Inovio Coronavirus Vaccine Candidates Fast-Tracked By International Coalition" - Scrip, 27 Jan, 2020.)
Gagandeep Kang, vice-chair of CEPI, has said the idea behind the initiatives is whether a vaccine can be developed in say four months from the start of an epidemic and then to keep reducing that timeline. (Also see "Epidemic Expert Kang On Tackling nCoV And Science As A Leveler " - Scrip, 31 Jan, 2020.)
Johnson & Johnson's Janssen division has also said it can develop a vaccine and make it available at scale within 8-12 months. (Also see "Coronavirus: Can Companies Achieve Vaccine Ambition? " - Scrip, 28 Jan, 2020.)
Atriva Therapeutics GmbH, a start-up pharma company based in Tübingen, Germany, is looking to see if its lead candidate ATR-002 for treating seasonal influenza, could help treat patients infected with the novel virus. (Also see "Atriva Fast Tracks Antiviral Candidate As Coronavirus Arrives In Germany" - Scrip, 29 Jan, 2020.)
US firm GeoVax Labs Inc. and Chinese vaccine developer BravoVax Co. Ltd. are jointly developing a vaccine. GeoVax will use its MVA-VLP vaccine platform and expertise to design and construct the vaccine while BravoVox will provide further development, testing and manufacturing support (Also see "Asia Deal Watch: China’s BravoVax, US-based GeoVax Team Up On Coronavirus Vaccine" - Scrip, 31 Jan, 2020.)
VGXI Inc., a Texas, US-based contract manufacturer of plasmid DNA, is gearing up for clinical trial quantity production of a potential DNA vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 as part of a new agreement with Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc.. (Also see "VGXI Gears To Support Production Of New Coronavirus Vaccine" - Scrip, 2 Feb, 2020.)
UK-based giant GlaxoSmithKline PLCis also lending its support – specifically adjuvant expertise – to a high-profile initiative to develop a vaccine against the outbreak. (Also see "GSK Joins Race To Tackle Coronavirus" - Scrip, 3 Feb, 2020.)