On May 6, 2020, Sinovac Biotech announced publication of the preclinical study on animals for its vaccine candidate against COVID-19. This was the first challenge study of its SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidate on animals to prove that the vaccine candidate is safe and provides protection to rhesus macaques.

As announced previously, Sinovac’s work on developing a vaccine against COVID-19 began in January 2020 in partnership with leading academic research institutes in China. The Company received approval in April to conduct phase I/II studies on its inactivated vaccine candidate against COVID-19 in China. The Company has commenced the phase I trial on 144 healthy adults aged 18-59 years.

The preclinical paper is jointly authored by researchers from Sinovac, the Institutes of Laboratory Animal Sciences of China Academy of Medical Science, the Center of Disease Control and Prevention of Zhejiang Province, the Institute of Biophysics of Chinese Academy of Sciences, the National Institutes for Food and Drug Control in China, and the National Institute for Communicable Disease Control and Prevention of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.