Sumi Biswas
Chief Executive Officer & Chief Scientific Officer
While there may be many reasons to lament the introduction of COVID-19 to the world, one positive outcome is the growth of rapid response platform technologies.
At the time that the global pandemic was declared, mRNA vaccines were little-known outside the specialist field of vaccine research. Since then, huge strides have been made to accelerate the development of new platforms and technologies.
As an organisation, we moved swiftly to advance our novel vaccine technology platform, originally developed at the University of Oxford. Thanks to a collaboration with the Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, our technology was trialled for the first time in humans in September 2020, in a vaccine targeting COVID-19.
The hope is that, with a growing realisation that we need to be ready for future pandemics – an awareness which COVID-19 exacerbated – comes a recognition of the need to have a suite of platform technologies to address them. Being prepared and having technologies that can be easily and rapidly deployed is essential. That’s what makes our technology attractive.
New technology to accelerate vaccine generation
The COVID-19 vaccine uses SpyBiotech’s unique protein “superglue” technology to display the SARS Cov-2 spike protein receptor binding domain on the surface of the Hepatitis-B virus-like particles. The superglue technology can be combined with a variety of different delivery platforms to present antigens to the immune system with unprecedented stability and high specificity, creating a “plug and display” solution critical for generating vaccines rapidly and safely.
Being prepared and having technologies that can be easily and rapidly deployed is essential. That’s what makes our technology attractive.
Not only could this technology offer an effective solution for future variants of COVID-19, but the real value lies in its potential across a broad range of diseases for which there are no approved treatments: it has already established proof of concept in viral, bacterial, parasitic and chronic diseases as well as in cancer.
