Medicago Inc. has been using plants to develop potential vaccines for more than two decades. A new partnership with GlaxoSmithKline Plc. Testing its unproven technology against the new coronavirus is bringing Canadian biotechnology to the limelight.
The Quebec City-based company administered the first humans with its experimental Covid-19 vaccine on Monday, becoming one of 23 candidates who have reached phase 1 clinical trials in the race to curb the pandemic, according to the Organization. World Health.
Medicago, which is backed by large investors like Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma and Philip Morris International Inc., last week closed an agreement with Glaxo to pair the vaccine with the UK giant’s adjuvants, boosters that can help any brand of injection.
Plants grow in a Medicago facility.
“It is a coup d’etat for a company like ours because I had to convince them of the strength of our technology,” said CEO Bruce Clark of the plant’s platform, which has not yet produced an approved vaccine. “It is a watershed moment for us as the new kid in town.”
Read more: Glaxo joins Biotech backed by Philip Morris in the Covid vaccine
Medicago relies on an Australian plant that is a close relative to tobacco, known as nicotiana benthamiana, to develop vaccines. The plant has a weakened immune system that allows it to easily house genetic material and develop particles that mimic a virus. As Clark put it in an interview, plants serve as “bioreactors” that can harvest clinical-grade material in a matter of weeks.
Canadian trial of Medicaid candidate Covid-19 will involve 180 healthy patients Aged 18 to 55, and will test several doses of the vaccine alone and together with two different adjuvants: one from Glaxo and the other from Dynavax Technologies Corp.
The preclinical results of its candidate vaccine with and without booster showed a high level of neutralizing antibodies after a single dose. According to the company. In case the early-stage study succeeds, Medicago aims to participate in later-stage trials in October and manufacture 100 million doses by the end of 2021.
A worker at a Medicago facility.
Photo credit: Gabriel Rancourt via Medicago
Medicago, like many companies behind the 160 coronavirus vaccines currently under development, is trying to win investor confidence by validating its new platforms amid the pandemic.
It’s “both exciting and extremely frustrating” to be a little shot player who vies to be taken seriously, Clark said. “If we are going to show the world how this works, we have to face Covid. Skepticism about new technology is there. The skepticism of the plants is there. “
Budding technology
Medicago was launched in 1999 out of a partnership between the Canadian Department of Agriculture and the University of Laval. After focusing on the adjacent tobacco plant, Medicago went public in 2006. In 2009, it began using the technology to develop an injection to counter the H1N1 pandemic. In 2013 Medicago was privately taken over by Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma and Philip Morris.
Clark, who spent his career at a variety of large pharmaceutical companies, including Glaxo and Sanofi, was Vice President of Philip Morris when that acquisition occurred. It has helped the company introduce a seasonal flu vaccine through advanced-stage clinical trials. That program is currently under review by the Canadian health authorities.
Medicago is not alone in the search for a plant-based approach to the new coronavirus. Cigarette maker British American Tobacco Plc has been working on a similar vaccine through its biotech affiliate Kentucky BioProcessing.
Medicago sees itself facing a challenge similar to that of high-profile vaccine makers like Moderna Inc., Pfizer Inc. and Sanofi, which rely on so-called messenger RNA technology to drive the body to produce a key protein from the virus, eliciting an immune response. MRNA technology has yet to generate a vaccine approved by regulators in the United States or beyond.
“We really believe we will need more than one type of vaccine,” said Nathalie Landry, executive vice president of medical and scientific affairs for Medicago, noting that various populations may respond differently to certain technologies.
So, Clark said, “the data has to speak for itself.”
.
