The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has completed its review of Vaxart Inc.’s Investigational New Drug (IND) application for its Phase 1 clinical trial evaluating its oral COVID-19 vaccine candidate.
 
“Our goal is to deliver the best, most elegant solution for conferring mass protection against COVID-19. Our oral tablet vaccine offers a much more attractive mode of administration than injectables and may confer superior protection against COVID-19 due to activation of mucosal immunity. Importantly, our room-temperature stable tablet is significantly easier and cheaper to store and distribute to the farthest corners of the US and the globe, as it does not require the very costly and complex refrigerated cold chain needed for injectable vaccines.,” said Andrei Floroiu, CEO of Vaxart. “The IND clearance and the initiation of our Phase 1 clinical trial moves us a step closer to proving the superiority of our convenient oral COVID-19 solution in the clinic. We are thus excited to start enrollment for our Phase 1 this month.”
 
COVID-19 Program Updates
 
Sean Tucker Ph.D., chief scientific officer added, “In addition to our clinical program progress, we have a hamster challenge study underway with our COVID-19 vaccine candidate to assess the potential contribution of inducing mucosal immunity to overall efficacy. We are also awaiting the results from a non-human primate study. Both hamsters and monkeys are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection and these models may be capable of providing a deeper understanding of the immune responses and correlates of protection elicited by our oral vaccine candidate.”