Therapeutic antibody company ImmunoPrecise Antibodies Ltd (TSXV:IPA) (OTCQB:IPATF) (FSE:TQB2) and Dutch biopharmaceutical company LiteVax BV on Friday announced a partnership for the launch of pre-clinical vaccine trials against SARS-CoV-2 in support with TRANSVAC2, a European vaccine research and development (R&D) infrastructure.

Based on large sets of data obtained during the analysis of SARS-CoV-2 therapeutic programmes, ImmunoPrecise's designed data-driven, well-defined SARS-CoV-2 spike protein variant vaccine candidates were combined with a novel class of synthetic carbohydrate derivatives, designed to act as a vaccine adjuvant, with the final formulations aimed at high efficacy and low adverse effects.

The collaborative, pre-clinical study is ongoing at IRTA (Catalonia, Spain) and is focusing on the feasibility of a single-low-dose administration to assess the safety and tolerability of the vaccine formulations. This first pre-clinical study enables the design of more extensive challenge studies.

In addition, IPA and LiteVax are initiating relevant ex vivo assays. The study results will be compiled by November 2020 and will allow the companies to prioritize subsets of ideal vaccine candidates for further development.