On Sept. 28, 2020, Tonix Pharmaceuticals announced that it had completed the purchase a 40,000 square foot facility in Massachusetts to house its new Advanced Development Center (ADC) for accelerated development and manufacturing of vaccines, including vaccines for COVID-19.

Tonix expected the facility to be operational within 24 months with single-use bioreactors and purification suites with equipment for Good Manufacturing Practice production of vaccines for clinical trials, including when fully operational, the capability of producing sterile vaccines in glass bottles. In addition, research, development and supporting analytical capabilities were planned.

Tonix was developing potential COVID-19 vaccines based on two live viral vector platforms: horsepox and bovine parainfluenza (BPI) virus. Four potential COVID-19 vaccines in development are based on the horsepox vector and two potential vaccines based on the BPI vector. Before year end the company expects to report results from an efficacy study of its lead COVID-19 candidate based on horsepox platform, TNX-1800, in which non-human primates are being challenged with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The TNX-1800 vaccine is based on horsepox which is believed to be similar to the live attenuated single dose smallpox vaccine developed by Dr. Edward Jenner more than 200 years ago, which led to the eradication of smallpox. TNX-1800 is designed to express the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein and to elicit a predominately T cell response in order to provide long term immunity and prevent forward transmission.