French vaccine company Valneva said on Monday that the British government had ended a COVID-19 vaccine supply agreement with it, citing a breach of obligations which the company denied.
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Valneva is continuing its VLA2001 development plan. Testing for the company’s pivotal Phase 3 trial, Cov-Compare, is ongoing at Public Health England (PHE). Valneva recently announced that its Phase 3 results are expected to be available early in the fourth quarter and that these results will form part of its rolling submission for conditional approval of VLA2001 with the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).
Subject to these data and MHRA approval, Valneva believes that initial approval for VLA2001 could be granted in late 2021.
VLA2001 is currently the only whole virus, inactivated, adjuvanted vaccine candidate in clinical trials against COVID-19 in Europe. It is intended for active immunization of at-risk populations to prevent carriage and symptomatic infection with COVID-19 during the ongoing pandemic and potentially later for routine vaccination including addressing new variants.
VLA2001 may also be suited for boosting, as repeat booster vaccinations have been shown to work well with whole virus inactivated vaccines. VLA2001 is produced on Valneva’s established Vero-cell platform, leveraging the manufacturing technology for Valneva’s licensed Japanese encephalitis vaccine, IXIARO.
VLA2001 consists of inactivated whole virus particles of SARS-CoV-2 with high S-protein density, in combination with two adjuvants, alum and CpG 1018. This adjuvant combination has consistently induced higher antibody levels in preclinical experiments than alum-only formulations and shown a shift of the immune response towards Th1.
CpG 1018 adjuvant, supplied by Dynavax Technologies Corporation, is a component of the US FDA- and EMA-approved HEPLISAV-B vaccine. VLA2001’s manufacturing process, which has already been upscaled to final industrial scale, includes chemical inactivation to preserve the native structure of the S-protein. VLA2001 is expected to conform with standard cold chain requirements (2 to 8 degrees Celsius). ■