May 21, 2020 | 2:30-3:30 EDT

Chairperson: Rob Burgess, PhD, Chief Business Officer, Sino Biological

2:30 A Global Health Vaccine for COVID-19

Peter Hotez, MD, PhD, FASTMH, FAAP, Dean, National School of Tropical Medicine; Professor, Departments of Pediatrics, Molecular Virology & Microbiology; Co-Head, Section of Pediatric Tropical Medicine; Health Policy Scholar, Baylor College of Medicine

COVID-19 has become a major global health threat, approaching 2 million cases globally, and now extending into developing nations of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Low-cost affordable vaccines to prevent COVID-19 are under development at the Texas Children's Center for Vaccine Development of the National School of Tropical at Baylor College of Medicine. Our technology is a recombinant protein vaccine similar to the one used to prevent hepatitis B. One vaccine is advancing into clinical testing, while a second will follow in 2021.

2:50 Strategies and Challenges for COVID-19 Antibody Development

Jiahui Yang, PhD, Director, R&D, Sino Biological

The COVID-19 pandemic is caused by a newly discovered coronavirus, SARS-Cov-2. To characterize and detect this new virus, antibodies to support scientific research, diagnosis and vaccine development are in urgent need.

Sino Biological, Inc. develops specific S and N antibodies to SARS-Cov-2 by several antibody generation platforms, including hybridoma, B cell antibody cloning and antibody phage display library. Meanwhile, we also obtained antibodies to recognize all 7 strains of coronaviruses that infected humans. Several candidates are selected for further analysis in research, potential diagnosis applications, and to facilitate vaccine development.

3:10 Development of a Single Dose Vaccine Against COVID-19 Using GV-MVA-VLP Vector Platform

Farshad Guirakhoo, PhD, CSO, GeoVax

In only a few months, the emerging COVID-19 has caused a global pandemic, killed hundreds of thousands, and crippled the global economy. A safe and effective vaccine to control this new pathogen is desperately needed. We have leveraged our unique, safe, live viral GV-MVA-VLP™ platform to develop multiple vaccine candidates against COVID-19. These will be down selected to one in appropriate challenge models for safety and efficacy before entering into humans.