Avalon GloboCare forges partnership with Austrian university to develop coronavirus vaccine

Avalon GloboCare Corp (NASDAQ:AVCO) has reached a strategic partnership with the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU) in Vienna, Austria to develop a vaccine for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the COVID-19 disease.  The principal investigator of the project will be Uwe Sleytr, a member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and a pioneer of applied surface layer (S-layer) nanotechnology. Eva-Kathrin Ehmoser, professor and head of the Institute for Synthetic Bioarchitectures at BOKU, will serve as co-principal investigator for the vaccine program. “We are encouraged by the progress we have made so far to develop a novel COVID-19 vaccine during this unprecedented world-wide health crisis,” CEO David Jin said in a statement. “We are working swiftly and diligently with BOKU to complete the laboratory testing and characterization of the S-layer fusion protein SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidate." READ: Avalon GloboCare welcomes 'S-layer' expert Professor Sleytr to its scientific and clinical advisory board The partnership is intended to combine Avalon’s expertise and resources in biomanufacturing infrastructure and clinical study implementation with the scientific capabilities and laboratory experience of professors Sleytr and Ehmoser at BOKU. The professors have already made progress by developing a proprietary technique to synthesize conjugate vaccines consisting of an S-layer artificial viral envelope linked to a viral antigen. Avalon and professor Sleytr have jointly filed a provisional patent application with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) pertaining to the nanoparticle S-layer based vaccine against SARS-CoV-2. “We believe that our novel vaccine approach has the potential to be effective,” Jin said. “Importantly, this vaccine candidate could be manufactured and delivered more rapidly compared to traditional vaccines, providing access and immunization to a larger population of people around the globe to help combat the COVID-19 pandemic.” Professor Sleytr joined Avalo’s advisory board earlier this month. Contact Andrew Kessel at andrew.kessel@proactiveinvestors.com Follow him on Twitter @andrew_kessel