BioVaxys Technology Corp has announced that its research collaboration with Ohio State University to jointly evaluate the company’s novel approach for a “universal vaccine” to treat a broad range of sarbecoviruses has reached a new milestone.
The company said Ohio State has completed the preparation of the surrogate virus neutralization assays for the SARS-CoV-2 variants, as well as Pangolin-Cov-GD1 and Bat-CoV-RaTG13 sarbecoviruses.
The next step will be immunizing the test animals with BVX-1021, BioVaxys' "booster" vaccine to be administered with current SARS-CoV-2 vaccines, to target sarbecoviruses.
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Sarbecoviruses are a family of viruses, including SARS-CoV-2 and variants of concerns such as Delta and Omicron, SARS-CoV-1, and a broad range of other potentially dangerous zoonotic viruses.
The World Health Organization in January 2022 highlighted the “high urgency” for pan-sarbecovirus vaccines as current vaccines become less effective against evolving variants.
The ongoing collaboration between BioVaxys and Ohio State evaluates the combination of BioVaxys’ BVX-0320 and BVX-1012 in a guinea pig model.
The major endpoints of the study are the development of virus-neutralizing antibodies to live virus SARS-CoV-2 and other sarbecoviruses, including bat and pangolin SARS-related coronaviruses.
The presence of neutralizing antibodies in the animal model would strongly suggest that BVX-1021 could confer an additional immune response across all sarbecoviruses in people fully vaccinated for Covid-19 as well as those with natural immunity, BioVaxys said.
Further, the company said recent yields of recombinant SARS-1 protein obtained from an external supplier for the bioproduction of BVX-1021 were determined to contain the presence of a natural protein aggregate by-product in addition to the SARS-1 protein.
BioVaxys president Kenneth Kovan noted that, although it would incur some delay in obtaining study results, the company felt it prudent for scientific reproducibility to re-synthesize a new yield of recombinant SARS-1 protein specifically screening out the extraneous protein aggregate.
“The Covid-19 lockdown situation in Shanghai further impacted the lead time for production of the SARS-1 protein by our Shanghai-based supplier,” Kovan said.
“MilliporeSigma, our contract manufacturer, is now able to begin the bioproduction of new yields of BVX-1021 vaccine for the study. We now anticipate data from the neutralizing antibody study by late August 2022," he added.
Based in Vancouver, BioVaxys Technology is a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing viral and oncology vaccine platforms, as well as immuno-diagnostics.
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