Medigen, BlueWillow collaborate to develop SARS-CoV-2 intranasal vaccine

Medigen Vaccine Biologics (MVC) has collaborated with BlueWillow Biologics for the development of intranasal vaccine for SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus responsible for Covid-19 disease.

According to BlueWillow Biologics, the preclinical research shown that the company’s nasal vaccine adjuvant combined with Medigen’s S-2P spike protein enabled to significantly neutralise antibody response.

The research also demonstrated a superior immunoglobulin A (IgA) response in both serum and lung secretions (BAL) samples in mice compared to intramuscular injection of S-2P adjuvanted with alum.

BlueWillow Biologics CEO Dr Chad Costley said: “Our partnership with MVC is a tremendous milestone in our plan to develop a nasal vaccine for SARS-CoV-2 and we are buoyed by the preclinical results showing that intranasal vaccination with S-2P-NE-01 holds great promise for both mucosal and serologic immunity to SARS-CoV-2.”

BlueWillow offers NanoVax vaccine technology that uses a novel oil-in-water nanoemulsion (NE) adjuvant to facilitate the development of intranasal vaccines for challenging diseases and intranasal immunotherapy (INIT) for food allergies.

The adjuvant, which comprises soybean oil, water and a cationic surfactant cetylpirdinium chloride (CPC), is currently in use in its clinical-stage anthrax and pandemic flu programmes and National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded preclinical stage RSV, HSV and peanut immunotherapy programmes.

The NE adjuvant evokes both mucosal and systemic immunity when used with intranasal vaccination.

With global technology licence from the US Vaccine Research Center at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), MVC’s subunit vaccine is based on the stable prefusion form of the SARS-CoV-2 recombinant spike protein.

MVC CEO Charles Chen said: “As the Covid-19 pandemic continues to spread around the world, there is an urgent need to develop a vaccine to fight this global crisis and we are proud to partner with BlueWillow to create an intranasal vaccination that has the potential to save human lives.”

Recently, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) agreed to provide up to $328m to Clover Biopharmaceuticals for the development of Covid-19 vaccine candidate.