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GeoVax and City of Hope Announce Agreement to Accelerate Development and Commercialization for City of Hope's COVID-19 Vaccine
Phase 2 Vaccine Designed to Enhance Response for Immunocompromised Patients Complements GeoVax’s Pan-Coronavirus Vaccine Program ATLANTA, GA and DUARTE, CA,
About this update from Geovax Labs, Inc.
[{"type":"text","content":" Phase 2 Vaccine Designed to Enhance Response for Immunocompromised Patients Complements GeoVax’s Pan-Coronavirus Vaccine Program ATLANTA, GA and DUARTE, CA, Nov. 09, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via NewMediaWire -- GeoVax Labs Inc. (Nasdaq: GOVX), a biotechnology company specializing in developing human vaccines and cancer immunotherapies, today announced that it has entered into an exclusive license agreement with City of Hope, a world-renowned cancer research and treatment organization. The agreement grants GeoVax exclusive rights to further develop and commercialize a multi-antigenic SARS-CoV-2 investigational vaccine, developed at City of Hope for immunocompromised patients, which is currently being studied in an ongoing Phase 2 clinical trial and shows a strong potential to be used in the general population as a primary and/or general booster vaccine against COVID-19 worldwide. The license provides exclusive worldwide rights to key patents, as well as certain rights to expertise and clinical materials, related to COH04S1, a synthetic, attenuated modified vaccinia Ankara (sMVA) vector expressing spike and nucleocapsid antigens of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Financial terms of the transaction were not immediately disclosed. The rapid development of this COVID-19 vaccine investigational vaccine – COH04S1 – represents City of Hope’s commitment to identify, invest and accelerate development of therapies that can significantly impact patients. COH04S1 is the only COVID-19 vaccine that includes both SARS-CoV-2 spike and nucleocapsid proteins to advance to a Phase 2 trial in cancer patients. Such vaccines also tend to produce an immune response quickly — in less than 14 days — with only mild side effects. In a placebo-controlled Phase 1 clinical trial of healthy adults, COH04S1 was shown to be safe and immunogenic. A Phase 2 clinical trial to evaluate the safety and immunogenicity of the COH04S1 investigational vaccine, compared to the Pfizer mRNA-based vaccine, in patients who have previously received either an allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplant, an autologous hematopoietic cell transplant or chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy is currently underway. The trial is also the first to compare an investigational multi-antigenic COVID-19 vaccine to the current Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved mRNA vaccine from Pfizer/...