Covid-19

“Neutralizing antibodies present in blood only contribute partially to protection. The lentiviral vector is now emerging as a promising vaccine candidate for intranasal administration to induce mucosal immunity with sterilizing effect in two highly sensitive preclinical animal models,” said Pierre Charneau, TheraVectys Founder and Chief Scientist Officer.

At a time where vaccination campaigns are on-going at various pace depending on countries access to vaccines and sanitarian political choices, emerging of coronavirus mutations poorly or not controlled by commercialized vaccines remain one of the biggest threats today.

Since early February 2020, the Institut Pasteur – TheraVectys Joint-Laboratory starts working on developing two vaccine candidates: a Sars-Cov-2 vaccine and a universal pan-coronavaccine. Therefore, TheraVectys is positioning on a second generation of vaccine that could generate a durable cellular response against the original Sars-Cov-2 strain, existing and future variants.

Pre-clinical studies of TheraVectys Sars-Cov-2 lentiviral vector vaccine candidate administered by nasal route have demonstrated its strong efficacy.

A prime and target vaccination regimen was applied, in which the immune response was initiated by a standard intramuscular vaccination, and then targeted into the respiratory tract through nasal instillation. A major effect on protection was observed after challenge, with lung viral load reduced by a factor of >1,000, falling below the detection limit of an RT-PCR assay in most animals tested. In parallel to drastic viral load reduction, pulmonary inflammation, tissue injury and cytokine storm were also completely inhibited.