Moderna recently announced that the first participants in each age cohort have been dosed in the company’s Phase 2 study of two potential COVID-19 vaccines that use its mRNA vaccine candidate, mRNA-1273.The Phase 2 study intends to evaluate the safety, reactogenicity, and immunogenicity of two vaccinations of mRNA-1273. These will be given 28 days apart, Moderna said.
The biotechnology company, which pioneers in messenger RNA therapeutics and vaccines, intends to enroll 600 participants in two groups: adults aged 18 to 55 years of age and older adults aged 55 and older. The two groups will individually receive 50 μg or a 100 μg dose of both vaccinations. Experts will follow up with participants 12 months after the second vaccination.
iBio Announces Second COVID-19 Vaccine Program
iBio, Inc. , a biotechnology innovator and biologics contract manufacturing organization, today announced initiation of preclinical immunization studies for its second COVID-19 vaccine platform.The new subunit vaccine (“IBIO-201”) combines antigens derived from the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein fused with the Company’s patented lichenase booster molecule (“LicKM”), which is designed to enhance immune response. The addition of the LicKM booster to a subunit antigen is expected to improve the likelihood of achieving single-dose, prolonged immunity while also increasing manufacturing capacity through increased potency.
“The launch of our second COVID-19 vaccine program is emblematic of the speed, flexibility and scalability we can achieve by combining our plant-based FastPharming System™ with other technologies in our intellectual property portfolio, such as LicKM,” said Tom Isett, Co-Chairman & CEO of iBio. “As a company with purpose-built pandemic response capabilities, we are pleased that in a matter of weeks we successfully discovered and advanced two promising, unique, internally-developed, COVID-19 vaccine programs into IND-enabling studies. Equally important is that our plant-based system avoids resource-intensive scale-up challenges associated with traditional manufacturing approaches so that we should be able to more rapidly produce high-quality material for hundreds of millions of doses upon regulatory clearance.”