On Jun. 11, 2020, Sinovac Biotech announced the signing of a clinical development collaboration agreement to advance the clinical trials of CoronaVac, Sinovac’s inactivated vaccine candidate against COVID-19 to Phase III.

Sinovac has made significant progress in the development of CoronaVac. Promising preclinical results regarding CoronaVac were recently published in the peer-reviewed academic journal Science in an article stating that the vaccine candidate is safe and provides protection to rhesus macaques (monkeys) through an animal challenge study. Sinovac has received approval from China’s National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) to conduct Phase I/II human clinical trials in China to determine the vaccine candidate’s safety, tolerance, dosage and immunization schedule. In addition, Sinovac is constructing a commercial vaccine production plant in China that is expected to manufacture up to 100 million doses of CoronaVac annually.

Through this collaboration, Instituto Butantan will sponsor Phase III clinical trials in Brazil. This is the first in a series of agreements expected to be completed between the parties to establish extensive collaboration that includes technology licensing, market authorization and commercialization of CoronaVac. In this way, Instituto Butantan can ensure that the Brazilian population has access to this vaccine.