The duo has partnered on developing a biotherapeutic therapy for flu and COVID-19.
Destiny Pharma – a company focused on the progression of novel medicines that can prevent dangerous infections – has announced results from its collaboration with SporeGen.
The partnership has been partly funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) since September 2020 in order to co-develop SporeGen’s SPOR-COV as a preventive treatment for COVID-19, influenza and – potentially – many other similar respiratory viral infections.
Research results support the initial theory that SPOR-COV nasal spray can stimulate an immune response that prepares the human immune system for significant viral threats including influenza and coronaviruses.
Meanwhile, SPOR-COV is also straightforward to produce in bulk, removes the need for a cold chain and could be stockpiled to prepare for future pandemics. The two companies are encouraged by the results, planning future studies and seeking partners for the next stage of development.
In addition, the companies have extended their partnership with Huro. This determines that Huro will hold non-exclusive manufacturing rights to supply future SPOR-COV, while also having exclusive rights to commercialise the product across Vietnam.
Under the terms of the agreement, Huro will develop the manufacturing process and conduct development activities in Vietnam, including human clinical tolerability studies.
Neil Clark, chief executive officer at Destiny, explained: “This Innovate UK-funded research project has delivered some very exciting data and we are now discussing the next steps with our partners. There is still a clear need for better pandemic preparedness for viral infections such as COVID-19 and influenza and the SPOR-COV product and the associated technology has great potential to deliver new treatments that are safe, effective, low cost and easy to use.”
Dr Simon Cutting, chief executive officer at SporeGen, added: “These data validate the SPOR-COV platform’s effectiveness against multiple pandemic strains of flu and emerging SARS CoV 2 ‘variants of concern’ by targeting the innate immune system.”
He concluded: “The SPOR-COV approach, unlike traditional vaccination, has been shown to not be impaired by new mutational variants. We are very pleased with these data and the potential benefit to patients and are very excited at the prospect of further development of the SPOR-COV platform.”
