On Mar. 10, 2022, Oragenics announced that it had entered into an agreement with KBI Biopharma for the process transfer, process optimization and cGMP manufacturing of the Company’s intranasal vaccine candidate NT-CoV2-1, which is expressed in a proprietary CHO cell line. The agreement covered, among other things, both a 200L demonstration run and a 500L cGMP run.

Oragenics previously demonstrated robust immune response and reduction of SARS-CoV-2 viral loads to undetectable levels in the nasal passages and lungs five days following a viral challenge in preclinical models. The company intends to file an IND in 2022 to conduct a first-in-human clinical study with NT-CoV2-1.

KBI Biopharma, a JSR Life Sciences company, is a global contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) providing fully integrated, accelerated drug development and biologics manufacturing services and expertise to life science companies.

Oragenics is a development-stage company dedicated to fighting infectious diseases including coronaviruses and multidrug-resistant organisms. Its lead product is NT-CoV2-1, an intranasal vaccine candidate to prevent COVID-19 and variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.