Candidate: “Insect vaccine”
Category: VAX
Type: Vaccine incorporating recombinant protein grown from insect cells
Status: China’s National Medical Products Administration on Augst 24 approved a planned clincal trial by West China Hospital of Sichuan University, designed to assess a COVID-19 vaccine based on proteins grown from insect cells. The trial is aimed at accelerating large-scale production of a COVID-19 vaccine at lower cost compared with traditional vaccines, the city government of Chengdu stated on the social media site WeChat.
The hospital’s State Key Laboratory of Biological Therapy developed the “insect vaccine,” which appeared to prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection without showing any apparent side effects in monkeys and other animals, according to state-owned Chinanews.com. It also reported that the hospital partnered with the vaccine research team and a company to plan and design the vaccine production line, with the goal of an annual output of over 100 million doses, Chinanews.com reported.
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
