Dallas, Texas 05/28/2014 (FINANCIALSTRENDS) – Novavax, Inc (NASDAQ:NVAX) and the University of Maryland’s School of Medicine announced on 30 April that the investigational vaccine-candidate that was developed by the former against a recently emerged Middle-East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus has blocked infection in its laboratory studies. UM SOM & NVAX also reported that the vaccine candidate against the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus that was developed by the company on a very similar platform had also inhibited the virus infection. Researchers had reported the findings in the article that was published in the 13 April 2014 issue of the Vaccine.
Historically speaking
Historically, the vaccine strategies for any emerging pathogens have also been limited because of the very sudden nature in which these virus’ first appear & then get delayed by a protracted traditional-vaccine development process. The peer-reviewed manuscript very clearly describes the novel method to very rapidly develop the vaccines against the previously unknown viruses, like MERS-CoV, that appear very suddenly and also cause different severe illnesses in humans. These experimental vaccines, that were tested in combination with NVAX’s proprietary adjuvant-Matrix-M, and induced neutralizing antibodies/ immune responses, that also prevent the viruses from infecting the cells.
High potential technology
The company’s vice president of vaccine development, Gale Smith, PhD said that the company’s protein nano- particle vaccine technology is now proving to have potential to respond very rapidly to the emerging viruses like MERS-CoV and some potential pandemic and influenza strains. In effect, these address what are very clearly urgent public-health needs. The company will continue to evaluate the technology to produce the highly immunogenic nanoparticles for the coronavirus, influenza, as well as other human-disease pathogens with a potential for pandemic & sustained human-to-human transmission. Emergence of the SARS-CoV & the MERS-CoV demonstrates exactly how coronaviruses can spill- over from animals to humans at any point of time, causing very lethal disease.