Coronaviruses (CoVs) transmitting from animals have caused three deadly human outbreaks over the last 20 years, the latest causing the COVID-19 pandemic. Current CoV vaccines cannot provide protection against variant virus forms without continuous boosters, they do not stop the spread of the virus, they are produced with expensive and non-optimal production methods, their supply chain is expensive, and they cannot reach global access. Thus, pharmaceutical industry and WHO are seeking more efficient vaccine technologies and there is a clear need for next generation vaccines, which would offer long-term and broad-spectrum protection against pandemic CoVs as well as other emerging viruses.
We have developed novel protein-based vaccine technology that would avoid the problems current CoV vaccines and manufacturing industry have. The aim of PREPARE-project is to plan optimal commercialization strategy for the utilization of efficient protein-based second-generation vaccine technology and manufacturing method developed for the vaccine. PREPARE-project demonstrates the concept for second-generation protein-based coronavirus vaccine as well as GMP-compatible vaccine manufacturing method for the new vaccine technology.
The validated vaccine technology and manufacturing method have potential applications for protection against existing and future viruses and offer several benefits over the existing technologies. Vaccine provides durable and variant-proof immunity, also stopping the virus spread, therefore less boosters are needed. The vaccine is inexpensive to produce and supply, therefore the vaccine can also reach the developing countries. The vaccine manufacturing bottleneck is resolved in the project and the results and know-how of the project can be quickly applied to variant and new pathogens and there is less vaccine hesitancy when results are collected well before the next pandemic.
Funding source
Research to Business funding (Business Finland)
More information about the funding instrument (Business Finland web sites)