The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that they are funding the development of an oral and nasal COVID-19 vaccine.
The $500 million effort is part of Project NextGen, a multi-billion dollar program led by the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to “accelerate and streamline the development of the next generation of innovative COVID-19 vaccines, therapeutics, and enablers.”
HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a statement that in order to “better prepare for future public health crises,” the government must find “new ways to administer vaccines to make it even easier for everyone to protect themselves from illness.”
“We are making progress on the development of cutting-edge treatments, such as vaccines administered as a nasal spray or as a pill. The Biden-Harris Administration won’t stop until we have the next generation of innovative vaccines, therapeutics, and other tools to protect against COVID-19, or any other pathogen that could threaten the American public,” he said.
The company Vaxart, of San Francisco, was awarded $453 million to develop an oral pill to combat COVID-19. BARDA will grant an initial $65.7 million for “early trial milestones, with remaining funds provided as the effort successfully advances toward trial execution,” the press release explains.
A $34 million and $40 million award will go to Castlevax and Cyanvac, respectively, for the development of the intranasal COVID-19 vaccine.
Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response Dawn O’Connell stated that these technologies, if successful, will make COVID-19 vaccines “easier to administer.”
According to Project NextGen’s portfolio, the program will “leverage public-private partnerships to develop new vaccines and therapeutics to better address current SARS-CoV-2 viral strains and prepare for future ones.”
Its focus areas include research into “longer lasting vaccines,” vaccines that are “easier to administer,” “rapidly deployable technologies,” and other targets.
Big Pharma whistleblower Brook Jackson exposed the effort on social media, writing, “Nasal sprays & oral vaccines for COVID on the horizon. We won’t be taking those either!”
In January, BARDA awarded Vaxart with $9.27 million to research an oral vaccination effort for COVID-19.
“We are very honored to receive this BARDA award, which will support the innovative approach of our oral pill vaccine platform,” Vaxart’s Interim Chief Executive Officer Dr. Michael Finney said.”We believe our oral pill vaccine platform may ultimately hold the promise of revolutionizing how we fight pandemics and how we vaccinate against several infectious diseases. Our team is very excited about this contract, which allows us to prepare to move forward with our oral COVID vaccine program, together with BARDA.”
Vaxart’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr. James F. Cummings, said that a pill-form vaccine “offers the chance to overcome needle-phobia, a documented obstacle to vaccination, and offers the potential to make it easier to vaccinate more people faster than with traditional injected vaccines.”
