Genexine consortium develops COVID-19 vaccine for human testing

Korean biotech firm Genexine’s COVID-19 deoxyribonucleic acid vaccine pipeline GX-19 is ready for clinical testing, as soon as it applies to the Drug Ministry for human testing.

Binex, which is part of the consortium that developed the drug, said Monday that it has completed manufacturing the supply enough for a clinical phase 1 trials of the drug.

GX-19 is a potential COVID-19 vaccine developed based on Genexine’s DNA vaccine know-how. It is being collectively pursued by a consortium comprising Genexine, Binex, GenNBio, International Vaccine Institute, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and Pohang University of Science and Technology.

Binex is serving the role of a contract manufacturer, whose job is to manufacture bulk orders of drugs for companies who have the laboratory skills to identify a viable pipeline, but not the capacity to amplify the pipeline in a large-scale plant setting.

Genexine and Binex are preparing to scale up the consortium’s manufacturing facility so that they can mass-produce for nationwide vaccination.

The consortium will apply for clinical testing of GX-19 within May, and is expecting to begin testing the vaccine on patients starting early June.

By Lim Jeong-yeo (kaylalim@heraldcorp.com)