Biotechnology companies Entos Pharmaceuticals and EpiVax, Inc. announced a partnership this week dedicated to the development of a pan-coronavirus DNA vaccine.
“We are excited to be working with the exceptional team at EpiVax, whose computational approach to optimizing vaccine design is second to none,” Dr. John Lewis, CEO of Entos, said. “We’re looking forward to bringing an effective DNA vaccine to human clinical trials as soon as possible.”
To do so, they will combine the Entos Fusogenix DNA delivery technology with optimized COVID-19 epitopes from EpiVax. By using Fusogenix, the companies can encode virus proteins in a DNA plasmid that is then injected into a patient’s cells through direct fusion. This causes patients to produce the viral proteins their body recognizes as foreign bodies, sparking an immune response that could provide long-term immunity against things like SARS-CoV-2 — the virus which causes COVID-19.
Fusogenix has already undergone preclinical toxicity and efficacy studies in animal models and been validated as an intracellular delivery platform for DNA. For this project, the companies hope it will lead to a COVID-19 vaccine capable of providing broad-based protection against coronaviruses and a cell-based activity that will counter active COVID-19 infections.