“Our COVID-19 Vax Efficacy is Promising; Lyme disease & Chikungunya Shots in pipeline”

Headquartered in France, Valneva is an established European specialty vaccine company that has already commercialised the Japanese encephalitis vaccine IXIARO/ JESPECT and the oral cholera vaccine DUKORAL.

Dr Juan Carlos Jaramillo, Chief Medical Officer, Valneva

It has recently developed VLA2001, a COVID-19 vaccine that stimulates an immune response to target the entire virus, rather than just its spike proteins. With such claims, VLA2001 could become the top-choice as booster shot for Asian countries, in addition to providing overall protection as the primary two-dose schedule. BioSpectrum Asia spoke to Dr Juan Carlos Jaramillo, Chief Medical Officer, Valneva to find out more about the new vaccine. Edited excerpts;

What are the unique highlights of the COVID-19 vaccine- VLA2001 under trial?

While different companies have taken various approaches to develop vaccines against COVID-19, such as using viral vectors and mRNA, we have developed a whole virus, inactivated, adjuvanted vaccine. VLA2001 is the only inactivated, adjuvanted, whole virus COVID-19 vaccine candidate in clinical development in Europe. It is produced on Valneva’s established Vero-cell platform, leveraging the manufacturing technology for Valneva’s licensed Japanese encephalitis vaccine. Furthermore, the vaccine consists of inactivated whole virus particles of SARS-CoV-2 with high S-protein density, in combination with two adjuvants, alum and CpG 1018.

What’s the technology being deployed?