Candidate: Vaccine targeting SARS-CoV-2

Category: VAX

Type: Integrated exosome-based vaccine aimed at inducing broad neutralizing antibody and antigen-specific T cell protection in the lung and other mucosal surfaces, based on Codiak’s exoVACC platform.

Status: Codiak said June 1 it launched a strategic collaboration with the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard to investigate its exoVACC vaccine platform in SARS-CoV-2. exoVACC is a modular system designed to use the properties of exosomes to deliver antigens and adjuvants simultaneously and selectively to the same antigen presenting cells (APCs), in order to generate an integrated innate, cellular and antibody-mediated immune response.

The exoVACC platform uses Codiak’s engEx™ engineering platform, enabling the company to incorporate within a single exosome multiple B cell and T cell antigens and adjuvants, as well as cell-targeting ligands and immune co-stimulatory molecules to potentially enhance and shape an immune response.

Codiak researchers will work with Bruce Walker, MD, and Gaurav Gaiha, MD, DPhil, of the Ragon Institute to build integrated exosome-based vaccines aimed at inducing broad neutralizing antibody and antigen-specific T cell protection against SARS-CoV-2 and a second virus, HIV.

The Walker/Gaiha lab will provide Codiak SARS-CoV-2 antigens identified using the Ragon Institute’s computational methods, designed to integrate network theory and structure information to predict highly conserved, structurally constrained T cell epitopes for use in antigen-specific vaccines.

Research will be funded in part by an Evergrande COVID-19 Response Fund Award that was granted to Codiak and the Ragon Institute by the Massachusetts Consortium on Pathogen Readiness.


COVID-19: 200 Candidates and Counting

To navigate through the >200 potential therapeutic and vaccine options for COVID-19, GEN has grouped the candidates into four broad categories based on their developmental and (where applicable) clinical progress:

FRONT RUNNER – the most promising therapeutics/vaccines based on clinical progress, favorable data or both.

DEFINITELY MAYBE – earlier phases with promising partners, or more advanced candidates in development that have generated uneven data

KEEPING AN EYE ON… – interesting technology, attracting notable partners, or both, but preliminary data.

TOO SOON TO TELL – longshots pending additional experimental and/or clinical data.

GEN has also tagged the most common treatment types:

● ANTIVIRAL
● VAX
● ANTIBODY
● RNA

Previous articleAstraZeneca, Accent Launch up to $1.1B+ Cancer Collaboration Targeting RNA-Modifying Proteins
Next articleAltimmune – T-COVID