The rising number of COVID-19 cases across the globe has prompted many pharma giants to step ahead for potential vaccine development. Countries like UK alone has witnessed more than 5000 deaths and several cases and is amongst the worst-hit country in the world. To overcome the menace of COVID-19, the UK pharma start-up Imophoron has cast off several vaccine candidates based on their unique and novel vaccine development platform ADDomer.
Imophoron has joined its hands with the University of Bristol COVID-19 Emergency Research Group (UNCOVER) to initiate further research. As per the sources, the company has claimed to initiate the preclinical trials of the candidate vaccines within a few weeks.
The major aim of the pharma start-up is to come up with a highly adaptable, easy to scale up, affordable and responsive platform which helps in robust vaccine development, countering the current and prospective infectious diseases like COVID-19.
“COVID-19 infects cells using its so-called `Spike’ protein. Most COVID-19 vaccines now being fast-tracked present the complete Spike to the immune system, which reacts by making antibodies. This approach risks inducing antibodies that bind to the wrong parts of the Spike and could make the disease even worse. Imophoron’s vaccines, in contrast, present only very specific parts of the Spike essential for cell entry and are potentially much less prone to this risk,”
– Professor Imre Berger, co-founder at Imophoron
One of the major benefits of developing a vaccine using the ADDomer platform is that the resulting vaccine may not require any adjuvant, refrigeration, and will have a significantly lower risk of side effects when compared to existing options in the market.
http://www.pharmatimes.com/news/imophoron_develops_covid-19_vaccine_candidates_1337851