Jinwon Life Sciences Selected as Lead Research Institution for Government Project on 'mRNA-Based Rapid Vaccine Production Platform Development'

[Asia Economy Reporter Jang Hyowon] GeneOne Life Science announced on the 17th that it has been selected as a supported project in the field of future response and development of vaccine platforms for unresolved new and variant infectious diseases by the Ministry of Health and Welfare's Vaccine Practical Technology Development Project Group, conducting research to establish an mRNA-based rapid vaccine production platform and to discover and evaluate the efficacy of leading vaccine candidates.

The project title is "Discovery and Efficacy Evaluation of Zika Virus Vaccine Lead Candidates Using an mRNA-Based Rapid Vaccine Production Platform." The lead institution is GeneOne Life Science, the detailed institution is Dr. Bang Eun-kyung's research team at KIST, and the joint research institution is Professor Nam Jae-hwan's research team at Catholic University. The government will provide 792 million KRW in research funding over 19 months.

GeneOne Life Science possesses mRNA production platform technology with improved antigen expression efficiency and stability, and through its subsidiary VGXI, holds a cGMP process for mRNA vaccine bulk production. Dr. Bang Eun-kyung's team at KIST has candidate LNP compositions and formulation processes developed in-house, while Professor Nam Jae-hwan's team at Catholic University has experience in preclinical toxicity and efficacy evaluation studies using mRNA vaccines.

A GeneOne Life Science representative stated, "We will apply the Zika vaccine antigen, licensed from the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency, to this project to develop mRNA vaccine bulk production processes and quality evaluation methods with improved production efficiency and stability." They added, "We aim to verify the possibility of domestic production of raw materials and scale up the LNP formulation process capable of producing mRNA vaccines for initial clinical trials."

Park Young-geun, CEO of GeneOne Life Science, said, "We consider it very meaningful to be selected for this project together with the KIST and Catholic University research teams, which possess core domestic mRNA vaccine technologies, at a time when mRNA vaccines are being recognized as the central technology for securing future sovereignty over new infectious disease vaccines and building a domestic global vaccine hub." He added, "We will successfully carry out this project to establish a domestic mRNA-based rapid vaccine production platform incorporating domestic LNP formulation technology."