Driving the spike: The way COVID-19 attaches to host cells — and Applied DNA’s unique DNA-production abilities — could lead to a vaccine against the dreaded coronavirus.
By GREGORY ZELLER //
Just weeks after announcing an expanded international collaboration targeting the menacing novel coronavirus, Applied DNA Sciences is preparing to mass-produce four potential vaccines.
Leveraging the Stony Brook-based biotech’s unique DNA-manufacturing abilities, Rome, Italy-based Takis Biotech will test potential vaccines against the coronavirus (now going by COVID-19) in laboratory mice, on a large scale.
Applied DNA expects delivery of four DNA-based “preclinical vaccine candidates” from Takis this month, and “within weeks” will use its proprietary, polymerase chain reaction-based DNA-sequencing technology to reproduce each for immediate animal testing.
