Candidate: Vaccine
Category: VAX
Type: Vaccine providing a fully synthetic scaffold for mimicking T-cell receptor and antibody binding epitopes, which can be rapidly custom-tailored to new mutant forms of a virus
Status: Ligandal presented its approach for rapid vaccine prototyping on its website, stating that its synthetic scaffold can additionally serve as a targeting ligand mimicking viral entry to target diseased cells and tissues with therapeutic agents. These “mini viral scaffolds can be synthesized in hours, and rapidly scaled to 100kg+ scale to meet global needs, Ligandal stated.
“Our next steps will relate to synthesis and characterization of these scaffolds, as well as additional techniques for mapping known and predicted immune-epitopes onto variable domains of the scaffolds,” the company added.
Unlike recombinant and other approaches, Ligandal said, its vaccine approach needs to use fewer than 70 amino acids out of an approximately 1,200 amino acid spike protein in order to generate a predicted trifunctional scaffold for ACE2 binding and TCR/antibody recognition.
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: