AuraVax Therapeutics Inc., a biotech company based in Houston, is developing a COVID-19 nasal spray vaccine. AuraVax has entered a license option agreement with the University of Houston, which will give them the option to exclusively license the nasal spray vaccine technology that was developed by M.D. Anderson Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Navin Varadarajan.
“We plan to stop COVID-19, a respiratory virus, at its point of entry, the nasal cavity, and we believe our intranasal platform is a differentiated approach that will lead to a vaccine with increased efficacy to create sustained immunity to COVID-19.
“For airborne pathogens, the nasal compartment is the first point of defense that needs to be breached. Mucosal immunity and vaccines are fundamentally important for a wide range of pathogens including influenza, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) and the current SARS-CoV-2,” Varadarajan said.
The biggest advantage of this technological innovation, is the ease of access which it gives consumers. Instead of having to go to a doctor to receive a vaccine, this would be able to be self-administered given that it would be like any other nasal spray on the open market.
Vardarajan is using the spike protein – which is the same protein that allows the virus to enter the target cells and infect people with COVID 19 – in the nasal spray which will penetrate the virus cells.
If this nasal spray is successful and is able to be distributed to the masses, it would be a big step toward getting back to what we considered normal before the virus changed our lives forever in March of this year. This technology wouldn’t only be used for COVID-19, though. According to Vardarajan, it would be used to combat a number of respiratory issues in addition to COVID.
In collaboration with the University of Houston, AuraVax will hopefully be able to develop this technology into something that becomes commonplace in the medical industry when fighting respiratory viruses such as SARS and other viruses. As time goes on, more vaccine ideas and options will become available to us to where we hopefully will not have to worry about this level of a pandemic again.
We hope this information on COVID-19 Nasal Spray Vaccine is helpful.
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