On Mar. 10, 2020, CaroGen and scientists from Yale announced they had begun work on a vaccine targeting the coronavirus responsible for the ongoing global outbreak of COVID-19 disease. The team is basing its approach on previous work done by CaroGen co-founder and scientific chairman John Rose in the wake of the global SARS epidemic of 2003. The coronaviruses that cause SARS and COVID-19 are genetically similar.