13th Mar 2020 12:59
(Alliance News) - Intellectual property firm Frontier IP Group PLC on Friday said one of its portfolio companies was working on a Covid-19 vaccine for animals.
The Vaccine Group reported that it has made "significant progress towards developing its novel vaccine platform technology" to use to treat animals. It has conducted rabbit trials of a prototype bovine mastitis vaccine. Bovine mastitis is a common disease in cattle and leads to udder inflammation.
TVG's vaccines to treat African swine fever and tuberculosis are also about to enter animal trials.
TVG added: "The company is now starting development of a vaccine to tackle Covid-19 for use in animals in partnership with the Shanghai Veterinary Research Institute and Kansas State University. The plan is to develop a vaccine designed to prevent Covid-19 and related coronaviruses jumping from animals into humans. TVG believes it is the only company adopting such an approach."
TVG's Chief Scientific Officer Michael Jarvis added: "As Covid-19 has shown, the spillover of disease from animals to humans can have a very high social, economic and commercial cost globally.
"Naturally there has been a swift move into funding the development of human vaccines and therapeutics, but to date we are not aware of any approaches to eliminate Covid-19 in the animal population to prevent future outbreaks or re-emergence of the disease."
Shares in Frontier IP were 12% higher at 65.50 pence each in London on Friday afternoon.
By Eric Cunha; [email protected]
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