Adenovectored COVID-19 vaccine / Consortium: FINCOVAC

The aim of this project is to urgently develop an effective and safe COVID-19 vaccine that could be manufactured in an industrial scale in Finland. The project makes use of an adenovirus-based gene delivery vector producing the viral S protein in the vaccinees in order to launch an immune defense against the COVID-19 virus. Adenovector technology has long been developed and successfully utilized by members of this consortium in Finland for cutting-edge research on cancer and vascular gene therapies, as well as in clinical trials involving a large number of patients. The project is already well under way, and our leading Ad5-based COVID-19 vaccine candidate is in the production phase and ready for testing in animals during the summer. If funded, we will develop and test several additional vaccine candidates, and take the best one of these all the way until the preparative phase of the last stage of the human clinical trials (phase 3).