Covid-19 roundup: CEPI in­jects $20.6M in­to Grit­stone's push for a next-gen vac­cine; Quali­gen shelves its Covid-19 can­di­date af­ter a failed IND

As the Delta vari­ant dri­ves a glob­al surge in Covid-19 cas­es, the Coali­tion for Epi­dem­ic Pre­pared­ness In­no­va­tions (CEPI) is in­vest­ing $20.6 mil­lion in Grit­stone’s ef­forts to de­vel­op a sec­ond-gen­er­a­tion vac­cine.

The funds will sup­port a Phase I study for two dif­fer­ent con­structs of Grit­stone’s self-am­pli­fy­ing mR­NA vac­cine, which is de­signed to de­liv­er a broad set of vi­ral anti­gens be­yond the spike pro­tein. The tri­al is ex­pect­ed to launch by the end of this year, ac­cord­ing to Grit­stone. The com­pa­ny’s stock $GRTS was up more than 10% on Tues­day morn­ing.

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