Hyderabad-based vaccine and pharmaceutical company, Biological E Limited (BE), and the Ohio State Innovation Foundation (OSIF) of the USA have announced an exclusive license agreement for a coronavirus vaccine technology.
The OSIF has licensed novel to live attenuated measles virus vectored vaccine candidates against SARS-CoV-2, which were developed by the Ohio State University College of Veterinary Medicine, exclusively to Biological E Limited (BE). The BE will be responsible for the evaluation and further development, including the commercialisation of the vaccine candidates.
There is an urgent need to protect the global population with SARS-CoV-2 vaccines that are safe and efficacious, can be manufactured with efficient, scalable processes, and have reasonable costs to store and distribute. The licensed intellectual assets were developed in the laboratories of Jianrong Li, DVM, Ph.D., and Stefan Niewiesk, DVM, PhD, as a response to the global pandemic. The vaccine candidates are live attenuated recombinant viral vectored vaccines based on measles vaccine strains.
“Translating this vaccine platform into the hands of a global vaccine company for further evaluation and development is a critical step and we are excited that Biological E has taken on this role,” said Dr. Patrick Green, Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies, Ohio State University College of Veterinary Medicine.
The Ohio State University College of Veterinary Medicine (CVM) team’s approach utilises the SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) protein as a target protein for SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidates, generating a series of attenuated recombinant measles viruses (rMeVs) expressing SARS-CoV-2 antigens. All resultant rMeVs, the basis for the vaccine candidates, grow to high virus titer in Vero cells, a WHO-approved cell line for vaccine production. They were also shown to express the recombinant S antigens, a critical step in developing a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. The rMeV-based SARs-CoV-2 vaccine candidates have proceeded through proof-of-concept trials in multiple animal models — demonstrating successful production of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies.
“With this licensing transaction, we have expanded the repertoire of the candidate vaccine(s) that we are evaluating, both in terms of the antigen and the platform technology,” said Mahima Datla, Managing Director, Biological E Limited.