A Quebec City biopharmaceutical company began clinical trials on humans on Monday for a plant-derived COVID-19 vaccine.
Medicago is the first Canadian company to administer doses of a potential vaccine to volunteers, 180 men and women aged 18 to 55 who will receive two doses 21 days apart. The company expects to have safety and efficacy results for the two doses in October.
Landry says its COVID-19 vaccine candidate stimulated a “very high neutralizing antibody response” in mice, along with activating the body’s T-cells, a major component of the immune system. Edmonton-based biotechnology firm Entos Pharmaceuticals is working on a relatively new kind of treatment known as a DNA vaccine. Unlike other vaccines, which prompt a body to develop an immunity to a disease, DNA vaccines inject pieces of DNA code into cells, directly instructing them to produce an antibody that stops the virus.
Medicago, named after the Latin word for alfalfa, has its origins in a partnership between Agriculture Canada and Laval University. It was incorporated in 1999, went public in 2006, and was acquired by majority shareholder Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharmaceutical Corp. in 2013. It employs 450 people in Canada and the United States.
“We need multiple solutions to make sure that we can protect the population in general, with the most effective vaccine,” she said.
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