IMV Announces Selection of a Vaccine Candidate Against COVID-19 to Advance Into Human Clinical Studies
DARTMOUTH, Nova Scotia--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- IMV Inc. (Nasdaq: IMV; TSX: IMV), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company pioneering a novel class of cancer immunotherapies and vaccines against infectious diseases, today announced positive preclinical results demonstrating robust immunogenic and antibody responses from the majority of peptide epitopes. Based on these data, the Company has selected multiple peptide epitopes to be formulated within its DPX platform to form a vaccine candidate against the novel coronavirus, DPX-COVID-19.
“These preclinical data are highly encouraging, showing that peptides formulated within the DPX platform have induced early and strong immunogenic response in an animal model. Notably, the antibody responses observed were equivalent or superior to levels achieved with DPX-RSV, which delivered a robust and sustained immune response in a Phase 1 study,” said Marianne Stanford, Ph.D., Vice President Research and Development at IMV. “Based on these results, our team has down selected a combination of peptides that have demonstrated immunogenicity and target several areas of the virus mechanism of entry in a non-overlapping fashion. DPX-COVID-19 is designed to focus the immune response on the weaknesses for the virus, to potentially increase its efficacy at preventing the infection and to efficiently inhibit virus entry into cells, thereby reducing the potential for immune escape, even in case of a mutation.”