Singapore-U.S. developed COVID-19 vaccine approved for clinical trials

A vaccine for COVID-19 jointly developed by Singapore and the United States was approved for clinical trials, local media reported Wednesday.

Arcturus Therapeutics Holdings Inc. based in San Diego, California, and Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore, said Tuesday that the Clinical Trial Application for the vaccine known as LUNAR-COV19 has been approved to proceed by the Singapore Health Sciences Authority, the Straits Times reported.

Arcturus and Duke-NUS will initiate human dosing of LUNAR-COV19 as soon as possible. The healthy volunteer study will evaluate several dose levels of LUNAR-COV19 in up to 108 adults, including older adults.

Follow-up will be conducted to evaluate safety, tolerability and the extent and duration of the humoral and cellular immune response, the two said in a joint statement, adding that new preclinical data demonstrates neutralizing antibody titres continue to increase for 50 days after a single administration.

"Based on our preclinical data, we believe that our self-replicating mRNA-based approach may produce high rates of seroconversion and robust T-cell induction with a potential single administration, at very low doses," said President and CEO of Arcturus Joseph Payne.

Ooi Eng Eong, deputy director of the Emerging Infectious Diseases Program at Duke-NUS, said preclinical studies on LUNAR-COV19 have shown "very promising findings," including the possibility that a single dose of this vaccine may be sufficient to trigger robust and durable immune responses against the coronavirus.

"We are very eager to start the first-in-human clinical trial here in Singapore and advance LUNAR-COV19 on its journey to becoming a potential commercial vaccine," he noted.

(XINHUA)