Vaxxas has secured an exclusive license to a SARS-CoV-2 spike protein from The University of Texas at Austin, positioning it to move a needle-free, room-temperature stable COVID-19 vaccine patch into the clinic.
Massachusetts-based Vaxxas has a patch delivery technology, HD-MAP, that uses an array of projections to get vaccines to immune cells below the surface of the skin. Vaxxas uses dry-coating technology to apply vaccines onto the projections. In doing so, Vaxxas thinks it can eliminate the need to ship and store the patches in cold chain conditions, simplify delivery and potentially enable self-administration.
Vaxxas has tapped the Austin-based university to find out whether can bring those benefits to the COVID-19 vaccine market. The deal covers rights to HexaPro, a SARS-CoV-2 spike protein that researchers at the university have modified to make more stable and immunogenic.
“Just as the virus has changed and evolved, our vaccines need to keep up with the latest challenges, too, and a key challenge now is vaccinating the world. It’s exciting to see HexaPro on the cusp of entering clinical trials with a patch-based technology that could be a real game-changer for parts of the globe where access to vaccines has been limited so far,” Jason S. McLellan, professor of molecular biosciences at the University of Texas at Austin, said in a statement.
Vaxxas plans to complete a phase 1 clinical trial of the vaccine patch this year. The study will build on preclinical research that found using HD-MAP to deliver HexaPro triggers stronger neutralizing antibody and T-cell responses than delivering the same spike protein using needle and syringe vaccination.
The U.S. government provided support for Vaxxas’ plans to apply its technology to pandemic pathogens in 2020 when it awarded a $22 million package to fund a phase 1 clinical trial of an influenza vaccine.