Bharat Biotech partners with CEPI to develop ‘variant-proof’ COVID-19 vaccine

Bharat Biotech founders Dr Krishna Ella and Suchitra Ella.

India’s vaccine manufacturer Bharat Biotech along with an international multidisciplinary consortium will receive funding of $19.3 million to support the development of a ‘variant-proof’ coronavirus vaccine candidate.

The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) announced the latest award under its $200 million programme to advance the development of vaccines that provide broad protection against SARS-Cov-2 variants and other beta coronaviruses.

The international multidisciplinary consortium will comprise Bharat Biotech International, the University of Sydney, Australia and ExcellGene SA, Switzerland.

“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 biomanufacturing approach that has provided significant quantities of protein therapeutics to the world,” CEPI said in a release.

This strategy could also be used to enable rapid development of broadly protective vaccines against other beta coronaviruses, as well as vaccines against Disease X—unknown pathogens with pandemic potential that emerge in the future.

“BBIL has successfully commercialised a universal COVID-19 vaccine for adults and children. While the 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,” Dr Krishna Ella, Chairman & Managing Director, BBIL said.

The award announced today is the ninth programme to be funded by CEPI to advance the development of vaccines that provide broad protection against SARS-CoV-2 variants and other beta coronaviruses.