Vaccine major Hyderabad-based vaccine major Bharat Biotech and US-based biotech company Precision Virologics have jointly acquired rights from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis for a chimp-adenovirus single dose intranasal vaccine for COVID-19 through a pact.
As per the pact, Bharat Biotech will own the rights to distribute the nasal covid vaccine in large scale at all markets except the US, Japan and Europe, while precision virologists has right to distribute globally. Initially the Phase I trials for the vaccine will take place in St. Louis and then with required regulatory clearances, Bharat Biotech will take up large scale manufacturing process at its GMP facility in Genome valley, Hyderabad.
The intranasal vaccine is not only simple and effective for administration but also makes it affordable and easy to use compared to medical consumables such as needles and syringes. Intro nasal dosage form would drastically impact the overall cost of a vaccination drive making it economical. The chairman and MD Krishna Ella also envisages to scale up to 1 billion doses reaching billion individuals.
“The licensing agreements will lead to rapid clinical development, following the intranasal vaccine candidate having shown unprecedented levels of protection in mouse studies. This technology and data recently was published in Cell and Nature,” the companies said.