Immunomic, EpiVax and PharmaJet Jointly Developing COVID-19 Vaccine

Immunomic Therapeutics Inc. (Rockville, MD, USA) is developing a nucleic acid vaccine candidate against COVID-19 by leveraging its investigational UNITE platform for prevention of the novel coronavirus disease caused by SARS-Cov-2 coronavirus. Immunomic’s UNITE platform has been widely applied to create vaccine candidates for rabies, yellow fever, dengue fever, hepatitis C and SARS, a relative to the SARS-Cov-2 coronavirus.

Immunomic, a privately held clinical stage biotechnology company pioneering the study of nucleic acid immunotherapy platforms, will work with EpiVax (Providence, RI, USA) and PharmaJet (Golden, CO, USA) who have a wealth of immunology and vaccine delivery expertise, to rapidly develop its COVID-19 vaccine. The collaboration will combine leading technologies from all three companies: Immunomic’s UNITE platform, EpiVax’s in silico T cell epitope prediction tool, and PharmaJet’s Tropis® Needle-free Injection System that precisely targets delivery to the intradermal tissue layer. By bringing these companies’ and their technologies together, Immunomic aims to create a vaccine against COVID-19 that produces broad and potent immune responses, is feasible for rapid-responses, scalable, thermostable, safe and easy to administer by healthcare professionals.

“COVID-19 is a global pandemic and fighting this will take a major global effort investigating many prevention therapies, treatment options and new modalities. We believe that our UNITE platform, which has shown promising results in infectious disease applications, is well-suited to develop novel vaccines for coronaviruses,” said Dr. William Hearl, CEO of Immunomic Therapeutics. “To rapidly advance our COVID-19 program, we are excited to collaborate with EpiVax, PharmaJet and our academic and strategic partners to explore ways to flatten the curve and prevent the spread of this deadly virus.”

“My company is thrilled to partner with ITI and PharmaJet on this important project. We believe that the UNITE platform, combined with epitopes that have been carefully triaged by EpiVax’s advanced computational tools, will generate a highly effective immune response against the pathogen that causes COVID-19, while reducing off-target effects,” said Dr. Annie De Groot, CEO of EpiVax.

“We are pleased to be collaborating with Immunomic and EpiVax on this important program,” said Chris Cappello, President and CEO of PharmaJet, Inc. “The PharmaJet Tropis intradermal Needle-free Injection System has had great success in clinical studies as well as improved the immune response of multiple nucleic acid based (DNA and RNA) vaccines.”

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Immunomic Therapeutics Inc.
EpiVax
PharmaJet