On Oct. 15, 2020, ImmunityBio announced it had received authorization from the FDA to begin a Phase I clinical trial of hAd5-COVID-19, the companyﾒs novel COVID-19 vaccine candidate that targets both the inner nucleocapsid (N), engineered to activate T cells, and outer spike (S) protein, engineered to activate antibodies against the coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2).

These dual constructs (bivalent sequences) of SARS-CoV-2 offer the potential for the hAd5 vaccine to provide recipients with durable, long-term cell-mediated immunity with potent antibody stimulation against both the S and N proteins.