Bharat Biotech, the country’s pandemic vaccine leader, is working on an intranasal vaccine against coronavirus disease (Covid-19) called “CoroFlu”.
Bharat Biotech is collaborating with virologists at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the vaccine company, FluGen, for the project.
CoroFlu is in the animal testing phase in the US, and is expected to move to human trials in the next three months.
“Bharat Biotech will manufacture the vaccine, conduct clinical trials, and prepare to produce almost 300 million doses of vaccine for global distribution. Under the collaboration agreement, FluGen will transfer its existing manufacturing processes to Bharat Biotech to enable the company to scale up production and produce the vaccine for clinical trials,” said Raches Ella, head, business development, Bharat Biotech.
CoroFlu will build on the backbone of FluGen’s flu vaccine candidate known as M2SR, a novel live influenza vaccine that protects mice and ferrets against highly pathogenic avian influenza.
Based on an invention by the University of Wisconsin–Madison virologists and FluGen co-founders Yoshihiro Kawaoka and Gabriele Neumann, M2SR is a self-limiting version of the influenza virus that induces an immune response against the flu.
Refinement of the CoroFlu vaccine concept and testing in laboratory animal models at the University of Wisconsin–Madison is expected to take up to months.
“Bharat Biotech in Hyderabad will then begin production scale-up for safety and efficacy testing in humans. CoroFlu could be in human clinical trials by October,” said the company in a statement.
