Clover Biopharmaceuticals, a China based global clinical-stage biotechnology company focused on developing novel and transformative biologic therapies, announced that it has entered into a research collaboration with GSK for its protein-based coronavirus vaccine candidate (COVID-19 S-Trimer).

GSK will provide Clover with its pandemic adjuvant system for further evaluation of S-Trimer in preclinical studies. Having one of the largest in-house, commercial-scale cGMP biomanufacturing capabilities in China, Clover could potentially rapidly scale-up and produce large-quantities of a new coronavirus vaccine.

“At Clover we look forward to evaluating the combination of GSK’s pandemic adjuvant system and our S-Trimer as a vaccine candidate. Utilizing our proprietary Timer-Tag^© technology that has been shown to be recognized by antibodies produced by multiple previously-infected coronavirus patients, S-Trimer is being rapidly developed to support global efforts in combating this current and any future coronavirus outbreaks,” said Joshua Liang, Chief Strategy Officer and Board Director at Clover.

“We are proud to work with GSK, and we are encouraged by the progress of our S-Trimer vaccine program,” said Steven Gong, VP Business Development & Strategy at Clover. “To this end, we recognize that collaborations will be critical to accelerating the development of a successful new vaccine in times of emergency, and we continue to invite any interested regulatory, academic or industry parties to contact us for this noble common cause.”

Upon knowing the genomic DNA sequence of the newly-identified SARS-CoV-2 virus last month, Clover scientists started designing the viral spike (S)-protein construct and completed its gene synthesis. Utilizing its patented Trimer-Tag^© technology, Clover has produced a S-Trimer subunit vaccine that resembles the native trimeric viral spike via a rapid mammalian cell-culture based expression system.