Adimmune Corp (國光生技) on Thursday said it is developing a COVID-19 vaccine in cooperation with the National Health Research Institutes, and plans to run animal tests in the second quarter if its research proceeds smoothly.
The Taichung-based firm has been working to develop the vaccine utilizing its recombinant protein technology since acquiring a genetic sequence from the US Centers for Disease Control last month, Adimmune spokesman Pan Fei (潘飛) told the Taipei Times by telephone.
As the virus’ sequence reportedly evolves and appears different in separate regions, the company is attempting to determine whether the difference is considerable enough to affect the efficacy of a vaccine, Pan said.
“Though the novel coronavirus’ genetic sequence is 70 percent similar to that of the SARS virus, it is still not easy to make the vaccine,” he said.
Earlier this month National Taiwan University managed to isolate the virus strain of COVID-19, and Medigen Vaccine Biologics Corp (高端疫苗) on Monday said that it expects to conduct clinical tests for its vaccine in the second half of this year.
Adimmune would not use the isolated virus strain during its development to protect the safety of its research team, Pan said, adding that it is hard to forecast when it would enter the human trial stage
The Central Epidemic Command Center on Thursday said that an infected Taiwanese businessman returning from Zhejiang Province in China last month had antibodies against the virus in his blood.
However, Adimmune said that those antibodies would not help in the development of vaccines.
“Antibodies are created by patients’ immune systems. However, our goal is to produce an antigen against the virus, which is different,” Pan said.
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