The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations CEPI), in collaboration with Ind-CEPI, will provide a fund of $14.1-million consortium of Bharat Biotech and International Vaccine Institute (IVI) to advance development of Chikungunya vaccine.

The funding is for vaccine manufacturing and clinical development of a two-dose live-inactivated vaccine (BBV87) against Chikungunya. This grant is supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme through an existing framework partnership agreement with CEPI.

The consortium will be further supported with a grant of up to $2 million from the Indian Government’s Ind-CEPI initiative which will fund the set-up of GMP manufacturing facilities for the vaccine in India, and the subsequent manufacture of clinical trial materials.

In addition to manufacturing, the partnering agreement will finance a multi-centre phase 2/3 adaptive clinical trial to be conducted by IVI in Colombia, Panama and Thailand that will provide crucial data about the safety and immunogenicity of the vaccine candidate.

The investment is part of CEPI’s third call for proposals which was launched in January 2019. Since the launch of this call, over $80 million of CEPI core funding has been committed to three Chikungunya vaccine candidates and two Rift Valley Fever vaccine candidates.

BBV87 vaccine is an inactivated whole virion vaccine based on a strain derived from an East, Central, South African (ECSA) genotype.

“Through this partnership, we will accelerate the clinical development of the Chikungunya vaccine candidate, with the aim of producing a vaccine and making it accessible to those most affected by the disease,’’ Richard Hatchett, CEO, CEPI, said in a release.

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW