Following an advice meeting with the Paul Erhlich Institute, Israeli biopharm company BiondVax Pharmaceuticals announced plans for development of its lead candidate, an inhaled COVID-19 nanosized antibody (NanoAb) therapy. The company said that it hopes to initiate a Phase 1/2a clinical trial of the inhaled NanoAb in COVID-19 patients in 2023, following completion of pre-clinical studies.
BiondVax licensed the NanoAb technology from the Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences and the University Medical Center Göttingen earlier this year. According to the company’s web site, the nanosized antibodies are derived from alpacas, have long shelf lives, and are relatively inexpensive to manufacture.
BiondVax Chief Scientific Officer Tamar Ben-Yedidia said, “We thank the experts at the Paul Ehrlich Institute for their helpful and informative advice. BiondVax intends to align our development plans to PEI’s advice, and I am pleased we have a clear path through preclinical and into clinical testing of the COVID-19 NanoAb therapy. As COVID‑19 is expected to continue circulating for many years, its high infectivity rate poses a real challenge to vaccination campaigns due to the high costs to health care systems combined with the observed continuously declining immunity. Having a safe and effective therapeutic product, which is also convenient to use, since it may be self-administered directly to the infection site via inhalation, would offer tremendous value both for patients and to our health care systems.”
Read the BiondVax press release.
