IMV Inc. provides update on progress of COVID-19 vaccine program
IMV Inc. (IMV) provided further details on the company’s progress in developing its candidate vaccine to prevent COVID-19 infection in response to the global health threat posed by the novel coronavirus.
The company said, “We are working closely with regulatory agencies and our collaborators to initiate clinical studies as quickly as possible.
The design of the phase 1 clinical study, agreed with Health Canada, is a randomized controlled study, assessing the safety and immunogenicity of DPX-COVID-19, in 84 healthy adults across two age cohorts: (1) adults between 18-55 years old inclusive and (2) 56 and above. Two dose levels of DPX-COVID-19 will be tested (25 undefined or 50 undefined).
We are pleased that Health Canada has welcomed the design of a phase 1 trial that includes this vulnerable population.
The rapid progress in target selection, the vaccine formulation, manufacturing and preclinical results so far not only demonstrate the potential of our delivery platform, but also build on our previously reported clinical data from a similarly designed vaccine against RSV, the respiratory syncytial virus.
Clinical results have shown our DPX-based vaccine against RSV demonstrated a unique ability to generate safe and long-lasting immune responses in older adults.
IMV’s candidate vaccine, DPX-COVID-19, is based on IMV’s first-in-class delivery platform that generates targeted and sustained immune response in vivo.
Fully synthetic, the vaccine candidate is designed to focus the immune response on the weaknesses of the virus with the goal to optimize safety and efficacy: DPX-COVID-19 is a formulation of the DPX delivery platform with four complementary peptide antigens that were selected for their high immunogenicity and ability to bind non-overlapping areas on the virus spike and impact its infective function in preclinical studies, Importantly, our selected targets are located outside of the 614 mutation which, according to recent research, has been demonstrated to increase the virus’ ability to infect cells in vitro and suggested to potentially reduce vaccine-induced immunity.
We believe our vaccine candidate would retain its potential efficacy independently from current/future mutations of the virus at this site, Areas on the virus spike identified as potentially responsible for vaccine-enhanced disease4 have been excluded from our target selection to minimize safety risk.
Since the Company announced the selection of its candidate vaccine on May 21st, the Company has made significant progress.
Preclinical studies have demonstrated the capacity of DPX-COVID-19 to induce strong immunogenicity including the binding on target to the spike protein and viral neutralization, The Company has completed the current good manufacturing practice (“cGMP”) formulation and manufacturing process development for DPX-COVID-19, and Multiple batches have been successfully produced at IMV.”
IMV closed at $3.00, last traded at $7.00.
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