PARIS (dpa-AFX) - Sanofi and its vaccines global business unit Sanofi Pasteur announced today that the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority or BARDA within the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has agreed to a proposal to fund the manufacture of an inactivated Zika vaccine for phase II development. Sanofi Pasteur committed to researching and developing a vaccine to prevent Zika in February, shortly after the World Health Organization declared an emergency.
In July 2016, Sanofi Pasteur announced a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement with the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) on the co-development of a Zika vaccine candidate. The BARDA funding is to take WRAIR's Zika purified inactivated virus (ZPIV) vaccine into phase II development with manufacturing and characterization of the vaccine product as well as optimization of the upstream process to improve production yields.
Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX