Japan's AnGes Developing COVID-19 DNA Vaccine Ready To Cooperate With Russia - Founder

Japan's AnGes Developing COVID-19 DNA Vaccine Ready to Cooperate With Russia - Founder

Japan's AnGes biopharmaceutical company developing a DNA vaccine against the novel coronavirus is ready to cooperate with Russian companies both at the stage of scientific research and at the production stage, Ryuichi Morishita, the company's founder and a professor of clinical gene therapy at Osaka University, told Sputnik on Wednesday

TOKYO (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 24th June, 2020) Japan's AnGes biopharmaceutical company developing a DNA vaccine against the novel coronavirus is ready to cooperate with Russian companies both at the stage of scientific research and at the production stage, Ryuichi Morishita, the company's founder and a professor of clinical gene therapy at Osaka University, told Sputnik on Wednesday.

The Japanese company is set to start conducting clinical trials of the vaccine in July. The second part of studies involving from 400 to 500 people is scheduled for the fall, and by the spring, AnGes is expected to enter the stage of industrial production of the vaccine.

"We have already received requests from foreign pharmacological companies about production in their countries. We are negotiating with them. I cannot name the countries, but we are negotiations with 3-4 countries. Russia is not among them. If Russian pharmacological companies are interested, then we are happy to respond and to jointly develop or provide technology. We are ready to respond not only to the sale proposal but also to the one on joint developments. If they contact us, we will be happy to answer. It is not only about selling the technology but also about joint development," Morishita said.

Speaking about the DNA vaccine, the professor said that the main advantage of a DNA vaccine was its safety, as it did not use pathogens, the body created antibodies responding not to a pathogen but to DNA information about it. The ability to produce a vaccine quickly and practically in unlimited quantities is its another advantage, Morishita added.

"Usually, [scientists] introduce a weakened virus into a chicken egg and create antigens the basis for creating antibodies to the virus. As for the DNA vaccine, there is a protein S2 in the form of a spike on the surface of the coronavirus. We use it as antigen. we use the gene information of protein S2, namely DNA plasmid, to create a vaccine. That means that we do not use the virus itself," the professor said.

Another important feature of the new vaccine is the flexibility of its creation, as even if the virus mutates, according to Morishita, a new vaccine can be developed in two weeks.

At the same time, the company's own production is still focused on the domestic Japanese market due to limited production capabilities, the professor added.