The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) on 3 June 2020 announced a new partnering agreement to advance the development of a Chikungunya vaccine. CEPI will provide the consortium with up to US $14.1 million for vaccine manufacturing and clinical development of a 2-dose live-inactivated vaccine (BBV87) against Chikungunya. 

The Bharat Biotech (BBIL) BBV87 vaccine is an inactivated whole virion vaccine based on a strain derived from an East, Central, South African (ECSA) genotype. The vaccine has completed standard pre-clinical studies, and an optimum immune response was elicited by the adjuvanted vaccine in phase 1 clinical trials in India. 

The award is supported by the European Union’s (EU’s) Horizon 2020 program through an existing framework partnership agreement with CEPI.

This consortium includes BBIL and the International Vaccine Institute (IVI) will be further supported with a grant of up to $2.0m from the Indian Government’s initiative which will fund the set-up of GMP manufacturing facilities for the vaccine in India, and the subsequent manufacture of clinical trial materials.

In addition to manufacturing, the partnering agreement will finance a multi-centre Phase 2/3 adaptive clinical trial to be conducted by IVI in Colombia, Panama, and Thailand which will provide crucial data about the safety and immunogenicity of the vaccine candidate. The investment is part of CEPI’s third call for proposals which was launched in January 2019.