On Mar. 17, 2020, Innovation Pharma announced details on the Material Transfer Agreement signed with a leading public health-focused U.S. university and top coronavirus expert. Under the terms of the confidential agreement, virologists evaluated the potential antiviral properties of Brilacidin, the Company’s lead defensin-mimetic drug candidate, toward developing Brilacidin as a potential novel coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine.

Vaccines containing defensins as adjuvants have been shown, both in vivo and in vitro, to activate the primary innate antiviral immune response and mediate other immunomodulatory activities against a number of viruses, including coronaviruses. Defensins and their mimetics, like Brilacidin, thus represent promising therapeutics developed as vaccines to target COVID-19, the deadly respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which has emerged as a worldwide pandemic.

This new research is independent of that being conducted on Brilacidin at one of the U.S. 12 Regional Biocontainment Labs (RBL). The RBL is testing Brilacidin’s potential inhibitory activity as a small molecule drug against SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus responsible for COVID-19.