Oragenics (OGEN) Extends Collaboration with the National Research Council of Canada to Develop Vaccine against the Omicron Variant
Agreement extends current licensing and collaboration agreement to include rapid production of Omicron-specific intranasal vaccine candidates
TAMPA, Fla., December 20, 2021--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oragenics, Inc. (NYSE American: OGEN) ("Oragenics" or the "Company") today announced it has extended a licensing and collaboration agreement with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) that will enable Oragenics to pursue an intranasal vaccine designed to protect against the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant. The NRC cell expression technologies provide Oragenics with a platform that can generate cell lines for high-yield production of spike protein antigens for existing and emerging variants of concern. This platform should allow production of cell lines within six to eight weeks of spike gene sequence availability, compared with six to nine months for traditional production of such cell lines. The NRC technologies, developed with support from the NRC’s Pandemic Response Challenge program, will expedite the evaluation of an Omicron-specific Terra-CoV-2 candidate in preclinical and clinical studies.
"Oragenics is well-positioned to develop an Omicron-specific intranasal vaccine thanks to our successful, on-going collaboration with the NRC," said Frederick W. Telling, Ph.D., Oragenics’ Executive Chairman. "We had anticipated the need for rapid development of COVID-19 vaccine candidates against new variants and can leverage the NRC cell expression platform to address Omicron and future variants."
Oragenics recently demonstrated the protection of hamsters against SARS-CoV-2 with the intranasal Terra-CoV-2 candidate, which strongly supports the further development into an IND-enabling GLP toxicology study and a first-in-human Phase 1 clinical study.
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