Kentucky company’s COVID-19 vaccine may have 1 big advantage over other companies
A Kentucky biotech company says it is developing a COVID-19 vaccine with an advantage over the competition — the potential to store it at room temperature.
The vaccine candidate from Kentucky BioProcessing hasn’t been developed at the same speed as those from Pfizer and Moderna. (Pfizer earned Food and Drug Administration emergency use authorization and Moderna is nearing such approval.) But Kentucky BioProcessing’s potential vaccine may not need to be kept cold, according to an announcement from the company.
The first vaccine required storage in extreme cold. Moderna’s version can last 30 days in a refrigerator, according to scientific reports. Kentucky BioProcessing said its room temperature vaccine could help health care networks worldwide, particularly where cold storage isn’t available.
The company had done high-profile work on infectious diseases before when it grew the compound for ZMapp, which was used to treat Ebola. But in 2018 and 2019, safety monitors recommended dropping the drug ZMapp from a trial of four drugs in the Democratic Republic of Congo because ZMapp was “much less effective at preventing death,” according to the National Institutes of Health.
The Owensboro-based company on Wednesday announced plans to begin a Phase I clinical human trial for its COVID-19 vaccine candidate. The company announced its vaccine development back in April. The vaccine is also unique because Kentucky BioProcessing is using tobacco to make the vaccine. The vaccine’s ingredients can be produced in about six weeks, according to the company.
Kentucky BioProcessing said it could grow, harvest and process as many as 3 million protein-producing plants in that six weeks “with the right commercial partner.”
The clinical study will enroll 180 healthy volunteers, the company said. They’ll be divided into two age cohorts: 18 to 49 and 50 to 70. Those groups will be divided further to receive a high dose, a low dose, or a placebo, the company said. The study results are expected by the middle of 2021 and could allow for progress into a follow-up testing/study phase, the company said.
“If successful, the speed of production of the active ingredients has the potential to reduce the time between identifying new viruses and strains, and vaccine development and deployment to those who need it,” Kentucky BioProcessing said in a statement.
British American Tobacco owns Kentucky BioProcessing. When British American Tobacco announced the vaccine development in April, the company said it cloned a portion of COVID-19’s genetic sequence. That led to the development of a potential antigen, the company said.
The antigen causes a person’s body to produce antibodies to fight off the virus. The antigen was inserted into tobacco plants to reproduce in larger quantities, and once the plants were harvested, the antigen was purified, British American Tobacco said.
Part of the advantage to Kentucky BioProcessing’s technique was that tobacco can’t host pathogens that cause human disease, according to the company.
This story was originally published December 16, 2020 at 4:01 PM.