OSE Immunotherapeutics Announces €10.7 Million in Additional Public Funding, via Bpifrance, to Finance Further Development of CoVepiT, its Multi-Target and Multi-Variant COVID-19 Vaccine in Phase 1 Clinical Phase

Regulatory News:

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OSE Immunotherapeutics (ISIN: FR0012127173; Mnemo: OSE) today announced it has obtained a public funding of €10.7 million under the “Capacity Building” call for projects, operated on behalf of the French government by Bpifrance as part of the “Programme d’investissements d’avenir” (PIA) and of the plan “France Relance” to support further development of its program on CoVepiT, its multi-variant vaccine against COVID-19, currently in Phase 1 clinical trial.

Alexis Peyroles, Chief Executive Officer of OSE Immunotherapeutics, comments: “We thank the French government and Bpifrance to show once more their confidence in OSE and to support us with an additional funding that will help enlarge the clinical development of CoVepiT, subject to positive results of the Phase 1 ongoing in Belgium, with a potential expansion of further clinical trials to other European countries. In parallel, we are making great progress with our vaccine industrialisation, a critical part of its development, with in particular the manufacturing of a new clinical batch to be ready on time for launching the next clinical phases.”

The ongoing Phase 1 clinical trial** aims at evaluating the safety, reactogenicity and immunogenicity of CoVepiT in healthy adult volunteers. This study is based on the results from preclinical and human ex vivo studies (CoVepiT 1) demonstrating that CoVepiT has the potential to generate sentinel memory T cells with long-term protective effect against COVID-19. Targeting 11 virus proteins (including Spike, M, N and several non-structural proteins), this second-generation vaccine is designed to cover all initial and novel SARS-CoV-2 variants.

In December 2020, OSE Immunotherapeutics obtained a first funding of up to €5.2 million under the PSPC-COVID call for projects from the French state, operated on behalf of the French government by Bpifrance as part of the “Programme d’investissements d’avenir” (PIA). This funding was designed in particular to support the CoVepiT 1 study, the manufacturing of a clinical batch according to Good Manufacturing Practices and a Phase 1 clinical trial.

* T Epitope: small fragment of protein (8 and 11 amino acids in length) recognized by the immune system.
** To read more: clinicaltrial.gov

ABOUT CoVepiT

CoVepiT is a next-generation multi-target, multi-variant vaccine against SARS-CoV-2. The vaccine candidate was designed using optimized epitopes selected after screening more than 67,000 global SARS-CoV-2 genomes, as well as those of previous human-infective CoVs, SARS and MERS, to identify vaccine targets with the lowest chance of natural mutation. Targeting 11 virus proteins including Spike, M, N and several non-structural proteins, this second-generation vaccine covers all initial and novel SARS-CoV-2 variants identified globally to date. In preclinical testing, CoVepiT demonstrated the ability to activate T cell defenses through CD8 T-cell multi-epitope responses for long-term T memory cell immunity.