Sichuan Clover Biopharmaceuticals, Inc partner with CEPI to boost development and manufacturing of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate.
The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) announced on 8 July 2020 the expansion of its partnership with Sichuan Clover Biopharmaceuticals, Inc to rapidly advance the development and manufacture of Clover’s protein-based COVID-19 S-Trimer vaccine candidate, which is based on Clover’s proprietary Trimer-Tag© vaccine technology platform.
An additional investment of USD 66 million made by CEPI will immediately provide funds for preclinical studies, execution of Phase I clinical trials, and preparation of global sites for efficacy trials.
With the possibility of a successful early stage clinical development, the partnership agreement anticipates CEPI providing significant additional investment which will fully fund the S-Trimer vaccine candidate through to licensure in China and globally.
“The expansion of our partnership with Clover is an important step forward in our efforts to develop a safe, effective and globally accessibly vaccine against COVID-19.” Said Dr Richard Hatchett, CEO of CEPI.
He also shared that Clover’s S-Trimer is a promising vaccine candidate with the potential to be scaled up, playing a significant role in controlling this pandemic.
CEPI’s investment will fund clinical development and initial manufacturing scale up activities in parallel, with the aim of greatly compressing timelines so that if the vaccine is proven to be safe and effective it can be given to those who most need it as soon as possible.
This agreement builds on CEPI’s initial partnership with Clover, announced in April 2020, which supported the preparation and initiation of a Phase I clinical trial of the vaccine candidate which began enrolling participants on 19 June 2020.
After proven safe and effective, Clover will be exploring development pathways for its vaccine candidate to be accessible to countries worldwide. This is in line with CEPI’s commitment to provide equitable access. Under the terms of the agreement, the vaccine output will most probably be procured and allocated through the COVID-19 Global Access Facility. This facility aims to ensure equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines for all countries who wish to participate.
Dr. Peng Liang, Founder and Chairman of Clover and inventor of Trimer-Tag© technology shared, “global cross-border collaborations during times like these are crucial for the successful and timely development of safe and effective vaccines which are important to ending this pandemic. As a China headquartered company, Clover is proud to expand our collaboration with CEPI with a clear objective of producing and supplying our S-Trimer vaccine to China and the world.”
CEPI also recently officially announced that it has opened a Representative Office in Shanghai. Through its Shanghai Representative Office, CEPI is seeking to cooperate broadly in China on COVID-19 vaccine development and build robust collaborations to prevent and control other potential infectious disease outbreaks in the future. [APBN]