The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) on Tuesday has announced the latest award under its $200m programme to advance the development of vaccines that provide broad protection against SARS-Cov-2 variants and other betacoronaviruses. CEPI will provide funding of up to US$19.3 million to support the development of a ‘variant-proof’ SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidate to an international multidisciplinary consortium comprising Bharat Biotech International Ltd (BBIL), India, the University of Sydney, Australia and ExcellGene SA, Switzerland.

CEPI's funding will support the consortium as it seeks to establish preclinical and clinical proof of concept for an adjuvanted subunit vaccine designed to provide broad protection against all known SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern, as well as future variants of the virus which have not yet emerged. CEPI will fund the researchers to conduct activities including immunogen design, preclinical studies, manufacturing process development and a Phase 1 clinical trial.

In this new vaccine design, modified trimeric spike immunogens will be produced in a robust and scalable process with high purity and yield at low cost, based on a bio manufacturing approach that has provided significant quantities of protein therapeutics to the world. This strategy could also be used to enable rapid development of broadly protective vaccines against other betacoronaviruses, as well as vaccines against Disease X unknown pathogens with pandemic potential that emerge in the future.

Informing that CEPI is enabling equitable access informed in a statement that they are committed to the principle of equitable access to the vaccines they fund.

Further added that under the terms of the funding agreement, the consortium partners have committed to achieving equitable access to the outputs of this project, in line with CEPI's Equitable Access Policy.

Giving insights to it Dr Richard Hatchett, CEO of CEPI said, “As repeated waves of COVID-19 infection remind us, we will be living alongside the virus for many years to come. The threat of a new variant emerging that might evade the protection of our current vaccines is real, so investing in R&D for variant-proof SARS-CoV-2 vaccines is a global health security imperative. Our partnership with Bharat Biotech, University of Sydney and ExcellGene will

advance the development of a vaccine candidate to protect against future variants of COVID-19, potentially contributing to the long-term control of the virus.”

Commenting on the partnership, Dr Krishna Ella, Chairman & Managing Director, BBIL said, “We have successfully commercialized a universal COVID-19 vaccine for adults and children. While current generation of vaccines are safe and effective, against currently known variants, it is imperative that we focus on innovation for multi-epitope vaccines, where a single vaccine can protect against all future variants. Our expertise in product development and innovation, especially with novel adjuvants and platform technologies will add to the strong partnership with CEPI, ExcellGene, and the University of Sydney.”

Informing that there mission is to deliver safe, affordable vaccines to combat existing and future SARS-CoV-2 variants, Prof James Triccas, Sydney Institute for Infectious Diseases, The University of Sydney, said " We are delighted to partner with CEPI to progress our platform for the development of broadly protective COVID-19 vaccines. We will provide a framework for pre-clinical assessment of vaccine candidates, together with access to Australia’s world-class early phase clinical trial community.”

Talking about the partnership Dr Maria J. Wurm, CEO, ExcellGene, said, “Our technological platform for innovative protein designs was used in the past to identify and manufacture an antigen for an Ebola candidate vaccine, resulting in sterilizing immunity in pre-clinical challenge models. For the current COVID-19 project we are using similar approaches to generate numerous antigen preparations derived from spike protein variants of SARS-CoV-2, focussing eventually on the most promising antigen for vaccine purposes.”

CEPI informed that the world has made great advances in vaccine development against COVID-19, but variants of concern will continue to pose a threat to this progress as long as the virus continues to circulate. Vaccines have dramatically altered the course of the COVID-19 pandemic in countries that have access to them, but emerging variants that are more transmissible, more deadly, and/or can evade the protection provided by current vaccines could create significant challenges. Developing novel vaccines that target multiple variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and have the potential to generate immunity against all of them is therefore essential for the long-term control of the virus.

"As illustrated by COVID-19, coronaviruses have devastating pandemic potential. The emergence of a coronavirus combining the transmissibility of COVID-19 with the lethality of SARS or MERS would be catastrophic, so developing vaccines that provide broad protection against the whole betacoronavirus genus is vital to our global health security," CEPI informed.