- SK bioscience will initiate a project on the “Development of Candidate Substances for Recombinant Protein-Based COVID-19 Subunit Vaccine” with the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(KDCA)

SK bioscience announced on the 18th that the company has been chosen for a priority negotiating partner of the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KDCA) for the ‘Development of Candidate Substances for Recombinant Protein-Based COVID-19 Subunit Vaccine.’

This national level project for development of COVID-19 vaccine is intended by both the public and private sectors to quickly develop a preventive vaccine against the pandemic to minimize the numbers of confirmed cases and deaths in Korea.
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The KDCA proceeded bids for universities, research institutes, and pharmaceutical companies in Korea, and finally chose SK bioscience with accumulative experiences in R&D and manufacturing, regulatory, commercialization, and clinical trials.

Through this task, the KDCA plans to rapidly develop vaccine candidates, including antigens based on domestic inflow cases of the COVID-19 virus and genetic information analyzed in domestic and abroad, and subunits.

With the support of the KDCA, SK bioscience will conduct R&D such as △ antigenic determination and gene synthesis required for the production of COVID-19 subunit vaccine candidate substances △ securing and manufacturing various candidate substances △ Development of immunogenicity evaluation analysis method and △ Efficacy evaluation of candidates in animal trials.

Earlier last month, SK bioscience launched a new R&D program to secure a platform for vaccine manufacturing technology that can be applied quickly when new infectious diseases become pandemics.
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Preparations for preclinical trials are currently underway to develop a platform with high safety that can quickly initiate the development through the same process even if a strain of new respiratory infectious disease virus occurs.

Jaeyong Ahn, CEO of SK bioscience, said, “We are equipped with a system capable of mass manufacturing at our manufacturing facility, L HOUSE once the new vaccine development is completed. We will tightly cooperate with the government to secure the technology required to proactively respond to national emergencies.”