US based Dynavax Technologies Corporation, a biopharmaceutical company focused on developing and commercializing novel vaccines, and Medigen Vaccine Biologics Corporation, with presence in US and Taiwan, have announced their collaboration to develop an adjuvanted vaccine candidate to protect against COVID-19.

The collaboration is evaluating the combination of MVC’s stable prefusion form of the SARS-CoV2 recombinant spike protein with Dynavax’s advanced adjuvant CpG 1018™, the adjuvant contained in Dynavax’s U.S. FDA-approved adult hepatitis B vaccine.

MVC’s subunit vaccine is based on the stable prefusion form of the SARS-CoV2 recombinant spike protein with global technology license from the U.S Vaccine Research Center at National Institutes of Health (NIH). Preclinical studies demonstrated that the vaccine candidate adjuvanted with CpG 1018 generated strong immune responses in experimental animals.